Akabane no Akanbou
by Akabane-Kun
Summary: 12 days of Akabane's life are suddenly missing from his memory, twelve days he can't get back. His body is being used against his will for a cruel medical experiment- and he's not going to take it lying down. What can Himiko and Sakara do?
1. The Thirteenth Day

Akabane no akanbou.

It was one of those nights. The air was heavy with a strange coolness, threatening that rain might come before the night was over. People walking about Tokyo drew their light jackets closer together and scurried across florescent-lit intersections, hoping to make it to their bars, jobs, or apartments before the rain would begin to fall and soak them thoroughly.

The threat of imminent rain didn't make Akabane walk any faster than his usual leisurely swish. He didn't mind getting wet; he liked the rain. He'd always been a bit confused as to why people were obsessive about getting a hot shower every night, yet they would scurry home like frightened cockroaches at the mere thought that they might become rain-soaked.

He was being followed, but it didn't bother him. There were plenty of people who had a big enough grudge against him to send assassins out, but he wasn't in the mood to deal with one at the moment. So, in his usual manner, he just didn't. Let them follow him around until they made their move, then he would kill them. No skin off his blades either way.

Walking past a night club, a girl with a shaved head save for a red lock on the front put down her cigarette and whistled at him. That, he also chose to ignore. Despite his appearance and his penchant for dark prose, he didn't particularly relish hanging out with Goths. He didn't like being measured by the size of the heel on his boots.

"What's the matter?" she called after him. Speaking of boots, hers looked like they could be used to crush the skulls of small animals or children. Completely not practical for the type of work Akabane did, which meant they were of absolutely no interest to him. "You too good to talk to me?"

He didn't justify her by giving her a verbal answer, but his internal monologue said 'yes, yes I am. Thank you for noticing.' Instead, he dug around in his pocket for a moment before managing to produce the last cigarette left in the familiar green packaging. Realizing he didn't have a lighter on hand, he wished his precious Ginji-kun were about to light it with a streak of lightning.

He turned a corner into an alleyway, preferring it because it was a good shortcut back to the little apartment he kept for himself. Most people wouldn't have dared walk the back alleys of Tokyo at night, but then again, Akabane was not most people. This he prided himself in.

He managed to get his cigarette lit with a book of matches he had picked up at a convenience store, only after his gloves were the only thing that prevented him from nearly singeing his fingers. Lighting matches was one of the only things he was genuinely clumsy at, it seemed. He pulled off his glove, studying the hole in it. Annoying, as if Ginji-kun hadn't already ruined enough pairs. They weren't cheap to buy, after all, he mused to himself, the cigarette hanging out of the corner of his mouth.

The next thing he was honestly conscious of was the fact that he was lying flat on his belly in his bed at home, still fully dressed for reasons beyond his comprehension. He usually slept… in his "birthday suit" as the euphemism went. He must have wandered himself home without thinking about it. It was like one of those sensations where you've done something so many times that it becomes ritual, and you don't remember doing it even though you obviously did.

Had he really become that accustomed to coming back to this shabby one-room studio apartment? Perhaps the best thing to do would be to look into moving, then. He hated to stay in one place for too long. The longer he stayed put, the greater chance there was that some government agency would put two and two together and he's spend the rest of his life behind the bars of a prison cell. That was definitely not fun.

It was only after he woke up enough to gain full control of his senses that he noticed the _smell_. It was like someone had gone through his apartment and doused every single flat surface in Lemon Pledge furniture polish. Gagging, he stumbled over to the single window of the apartment and forced it open to allow fresh air in.

'Did I get wasted and do some drunken furniture polishing?' he wondered to himself, then decided to check the few bottles of wine he kept around in case the chance for a romantic moment with a conquest should happen. No, they were still there, and he couldn't genuinely remember going to a bar on his way home. On top of that, he had no idea why he would decide to clean house in a drunken haze.

When the smell didn't go away, he started seeking out its source. After a good half hour of frustration, he finally realized that it was his clothes that smelled as though someone had given him a bath in furniture polish. Maybe he'd encountered Peta protestors who had mistaken his coat for leather? He had no clue why they're throw furniture polish on him, but if they had, they were likely dead. Huh. Did it count as animal cruelty to kill Peta protestors? Or was it charity? He thought he'd likely remember something like that, though.

The only late-night, coin-operated laundry was a good two blocks away, but he certainly wasn't going to spend the night with clothing that smelled like furniture polish. Gathering up what other few clothes he had to wash into a stripped laundry bag and counting out the appropriate coins into his pocket, he meandered outside.

The sky had apparently cleared up while he was asleep, the threat of rain overwhelmed by heat so oppressive that it made him almost want to turn back around and wash his clothes himself in his sink. Too bad most bathhouses wouldn't be open that late at night or early in the morning, depending on how you wanted to take it. A wash would feel good right then, and hopefully get the stink of lemon out of his pores.

Settling down in the garish green plastic chairs under the harsh glare of lights intended to keep the criminal element from doing things other than laundry late at night, he realized he'd forgotten to bring something to read while waiting. He supposed his things would be okay if he left them just long enough to walk to a convenience store and grab a magazine, but they rarely offered anything interesting enough for him to want to read it.

He would have checked his voicemail, but his cell phone's batteries had apparently died. "Curioser and curiouser," he mumbled to himself. He'd just charged them that morning…

The door opened with a familiar tinkle of bells, warning the fat man who sat in back supposedly working security that another patron had entered. Akabane knew him, but not by name. He was a petty thief of no particular consequence, just a lowly Snatcher that Akabane was familiar with through vague association.

The man grinned, revealing the severe loss of teeth normally associated with villains of melodramas. "Imagine that I'd find you here, just doing your laundry, when you've caused such a commotion these last few days, Aka-chan."

Akabane cringed. Aka-chan, you see, translates into "baby," and Akabane was not fond of being referred to in such a casual way in the same category as something that exists to poop and drool. The nameless man should be grateful he wasn't worth Akabane's effort.

"I have no idea what you're talking about," he answered coldly.

"Well after you stopped showing up for your jobs, we all assumed you were dead. Hell, there was even a betting pool out on who was the one that finally snuffed out the infamous doctor-"

"Please don't use my name in such a public place," Akabane snapped, cutting him off and rising threateningly to his full height. "What are you talking about? I haven't missed any jobs."

"Really? Underworld rumor says you haven't shown up for a single one of your assignments in over a week."

Akabane raised an eyebrow slightly. "Rumors are called that for a reason. You shouldn't be so quick to believe them."

The nameless thug gave Akabane a slightly indignant look before collecting his personal things out of a dryer. "If you don't believe me, it's not my problem," he shrugged, taking his things and quickly departing.

Idiots, Akabane thought as he settled back down into the plastic chair. Sometimes he was torn between whether he loved or hated his job.

Returning home two hours later, he plugged his cellular phone into the wall to recharge. Almost instantly, it lit up in a bright green glow. He yawned and stretched, still feeling slightly miffed at the fact that such a stupid rumor about him shirking his contracts would be making its way around the underworld.

The phone beeped once. I have a voice mail, Akabane thought. The phone beeped again, indicating two voice mails. Then the phone beeped a third time, and continued to beep… again and again and again.

Forty-two voice messages when the phone finally stopped protesting. How the heck had he received forty-two messages in just the space of a few hours? Half of them must be prank calls or wrong numbers, that had to be the explanation.

The first three calls were from Lady Poison. "Dr. Jackal, where the hell are you? I know you're normally 'stylishly late' but this is getting ridiculous."

"Jackal, we're only going to wait for ten more minutes."

"Jackal, we left without you. You can find your own damn ride if you want to try to catch up with us, but I'd like to get paid sometime this century."

The next message was actually a wrong number, then Lady Poison again. For some reason, she sounded actually… concerned. "Dr. Jackal, are you okay? It's not like you not to show up." She was right. She'd once had to do a job with him where he'd thrown up over the side of her motorcycle because he hadn't let a little something like the stomach flu keep him down. She'd asked him to never, ever again work with her while he was that sick. Mostly because he'd given her his virus in the process, and she'd spent a week in bed with vomiting and chills.

Many of the rest of the messages ran in the same vein. Inquiries as to where he was. Angry demands from clients that he answer the phone. Swearing, threatening to have him assassinated. How boring. He almost laughed at the message left by a friend that merely curiously asked. "You're not answering your phone. Are you dead?"

However, the fact that a week or so had just disappeared out of his life was no laughing matter. It was something to be deeply looked into, and the people responsible horribly punished at the end of ceramic blades.

'There's just one problem with that, Akabane-kun,' his inner monologue commented. 'You don't even know where to begin looking for answers.'

"Yes I do," he answered himself out loud, startling the crow that was sitting outside his window. The alley where his last conscious memory was located, and the nightclub he'd passed before turning down the alley. The vague presence he remembered following him that hadn't concerned him at the time… all of those were places to start. Not very good places, it was true, but it was better than nothing.

Despite the late hour, Akabane knew he wouldn't sleep if he didn't get immediately onto solving the mystery. He slipped the curtains shut and shuttled out of the clothes he'd awakened in, throwing them into his now-empty laundry bag. It was only when he'd stripped himself that he noticed a new scratch on his body.

It was long and thin, just below his navel but offset to the left a few inches. At first glance it looked shallow, but when he poked at it, he could see that it had been carefully stitched up at some point. No, not just cautiously… meticulously stitched up. The stitching was as tiny and fine as any surgeon's that he'd ever seen, made with a near-invisible thread.

Things were getting stranger by the minute. A week he couldn't remember, stitches he couldn't remember getting. He'd think he'd at least remember receiving a cut to his abdomen so severe it required stitching, especially since his natural ability to recover from wounds quickly usually rendered stitches unnecessary.

It then dawned on him that he needed to throw up badly.

Himiko, aka Lady Poison, was none too happy to receive a phone call at two in the morning. Grunting, she rolled over and snatched up the small blue cellular she kept by her bedside. "Hello?" she snorted into the phone.

"Lady Poison?" a familiar voice asked. THAT woke her up. She sat up so quickly she smacked her head on her night stand, letting out a cry of urgent pain.

"OW! Dr. Jackal? I thought you were dead!?"

"So I hear," he replied dryly. "How long have I been dead?"

Lady Poison blinked. "Eh?"

"I should phrase that better. How long have I been missing?

She checked her calendar. "I don't know. You were supposed to work with us nine days ago. What do you mean by asking 'how long have I been missing?"

"The honest and simple truth of the matter, Lady Poison, since I don't feel like coming up with an explanation is that a good week or so of my life is missing, and I plan to have a severe talk with the person responsible for it being… gone."

"Jackal? You okay?"

He was holding his stomach, trying to keep down the bile that threatened to rise up in his throat. He didn't need a flu on top of what ever else had happened to him. "I am fine. Thank you for the information. I am going to go play 'seek' now, as the people who are responsible have no hope of hiding."

"Wait, I'll go with you."

"That isn't necessary," he answered shortly. The last thing he needed was her following him around when he was in a bad mood. He genuinely… tolerated her. It would be a pity if he cut her pretty head off just because he wasn't feeling up to par. Sweet Ban-chan would never forgive him for that one.

"What makes you think you won't get knocked out for another week if you go alone?" she asked.

"What makes you think you won't get knocked out if you go with me?" he answered.

Himiko sighed on the other end of the line. "Fine, you're stubborn. I'm going back to bed." With that, she hung up, and Akabane slipped his phone into the pocket of his freshly cleaned jacket.

It was time to go get the answers to some questions.

Author: I was dared to write this. For reasons I do not understand, I can not resist a good dare. I really should look into taking some assertiveness classes.

---


	2. No Longer Bored

Akabane stirred a small white ceramic cup of cold tea. It had been hot when he'd ordered it. However, hardly a sip had been taken before it had sat untouched long enough to lose its heat.

The circles under his eyes had reached such a dulled gray texture and dusted quality that it looked as though he were recovering from getting caught on the wrong eng of a pair of brass knuckles. He'd barely been able to sleep, resting an hour or two at a time at best of late. Either he found himself dozing off in the middle of times when he should have been doing other things, or tossing and turning under the sheets when he was supposed to be sleeping.

Considering that he was mostly nocturnal, this normally wouldn't have bothered him, but he found it more difficult to search to answers to his disappearance if he were constantly finding himself napping in bus stations. When he did manage to take those rare naps, he tended to suffer feverish nightmares that left him gasping for air upon awakening.

"Akabane-san?" Himiko asked, uninvitedly arriving behind him. He hadn't planned on seeing her there, but her presence didn't bother or excite him one way or another. "You look like hell," she noted, pulling up a chair. "Your skin is absolutely gray." She paused, studying him. "You should see a doctor. A _real_ doctor."

He bristled at her comment, then relaxed. He'd never told her about his qualifications as a "Real" doctor, so she couldn't be expected to know about them. Still, it was a source of wound in his pride for him to have all his medical knowledge and not be able to self-diagnose what was wrong with himself. "Mmm," he mumbled in response, nibbling on a handful of squid jerky. "Want some?" he asked, holding up the bag to distract her.

She took a few pieces out of the bag and sucked on them. "I do, but I thought you hated this stuff. You wouldn't even sit up front with us the time Mr. No Brakes brought a bag to share."

"I do. It's vile, and the smell alone makes me want to vomit."

"Then why are you eating it?" Himiko asked, incredulous.

"I just wanted it."

She raised a thin eyebrow at him. "You must be sick. I've never heard you mention wanting something you disliked before."

"Am I not entitled to change my mind?" he asked, snapping a bit more than he would have preferred to. It wasn't his nature to snap, but the lack of decent sleep left him edgy. "They are tolerable with enough soy sauce, I have discovered," he shrugged. "I have to use the restroom now. Excuse me," he said, sliding out of his chair and disappearing in the direction of the Little Boy's room.

Himiko sighed. She didn't understand him, and as the quote went, doubted he understood himself. Looking down, she realized that he'd doodled words on his tray of soy with his chopsticks. It took her a moment of squinting to read them, but she managed to make out the words. "White… man… what does white man mean?" she asked aloud, not realizing that Akabane had returned from his bathroom trip.

"Hm?" he asked, returning to his seat and causing Lady Poison to jump slightly.

She pointed to his plate. "You wrote the kanji for white and man in your soy."

He didn't have an answer to that. He knew he'd been doodling in his side dish, but he hadn't consciously realized he was writing words. This bothered him, but he wasn't about to express that to Lady Poison. "I guess I drifted off while playing in my food."

Himiko regarded him suspiciously. "It's also not your nature to do things without thinking, or disappear for almost two weeks, leaving your contracts unfulfilled. Akabane… are you… did you… when I first met you…"

"No," he answered, his voice sharp but distant. A piece of squid jerky dangled from his lips. "I wouldn't go back to that." He knew where the conversation was heading, and he was in no mood to discuss that or how fruitless his attempts at finding his missing days had been. However, she might think of some detail he'd missed, so he had to.

"Himiko-san, what would you do if you'd lost something important to you and couldn't find it again, no matter how hard you tried?"

Himiko blinked at him, then jokingly answered, "Why, I'd call the Get Backers, of course."

Well, there now. That was a perfectly logical solution to his problem, and it would give him an excuse to send his preciously beloved Ginji-kun into terror convulsions again. He was surprised that he hadn't thought of it himself. "Thank you, Lady Poison. As usual the most obvious solution is the most overlooked one."

"What? Wait! I-" Himiko cried, spitting out her drink and throwing down a few bills to cover the cost as she chased Akabane out the door. "I was joking! They'll never take a case from you! Just the sound of your name makes Ban want to vomit."

Akabane put a hand on his pained intestines. "Considering the nature of this flu that has stuck to me for the last week, if that is the case, I shall easily return the gesture," he answered earnestly.

She grabbed the back of his coat. "If you're sick you should be home in bed, not picking fights with Midou Ban!" she cried, trying to pull him back.

He ignored her, letting her drag off the back of his outfit. "What do my affairs with the Get Backers matter to you? You say you do not like Midou Ban, but yet, every time he is mentioned in his absence your face turns colors of red. You also seem to care if harm should come to him. Is there something I should read behind the lines, Himiko-chan?"

She sighed and released him, not wanting to fight with Jackal when he was in the mood to do so. He could be as tenacious at hanging onto meat on a bone as his namesake animal. When he was determined to be stubborn, trying to control him was like trying to hold up a Bullet Train with your bare hands. Resigned, she merely followed him, hoping to minimize the amount of damage done. Oh, how she hated men and all their machismo.

All of Himiko's concern turned out to be temporarily for naught, as the Get Backers were out on another case when the Dr. Jackal came to call. This "disappointed and displeased" Akabane, who quietly vanished into the men's room upon making his displeasure known.

While Himiko quietly waited, the overhead door bells announced the entrance of another customer. She brightened up when her semi-friend Sakura entered, carrying a manila envelope in her delicate hands.

"My brother asked me to bring these to Reitei," she explained, indicating the contents of the envelope. "Are you here to visit Ban-san?"

"Hardly," Himiko scoffed, waving off the suggestion. "I'm here because Dr. Jackal is as stubborn as an ass. He's determined to hire them, whether they want him to or not."

Speak of the devil, Akabane appeared out of the bathroom. "I dislike squid jerky coming up twice as much as I dislike it going down."

"If you're sick, go to bed!" Himiko snapped.

"I am not sick, my stomach has just decided to rebel against the communist rest of my body and is preventing me from eating or sleeping as a means of taking my cells hostage until demands are met."

"I can help with that!" Sakura said brightly. "Wan-san, might I borrow a booth?"

Paul looked about at the devoidness of customers, and then sighed. "You might as well go ahead, but clean up if we get business."

Sakura fearlessly grabbed Akabane's black-clothed arm. "Lie down on the booth," she commanded, removing a row of sharp needles from her sash.

Akabane, remaining upright right where he was, eyed her suspiciously. Since he'd been trained as a classical doctor, he'd been taught to treat chiropracticy and acupuncture as quack arts. "I doubt the dubious medical benefits of sticking needles into my flesh."

"Who would have imagined? The infamous scalpel-wielding _Doctor_ Jackal, afraid of needles," Himiko taunted.

That wasn't true. He wasn't afraid of them, per se. He just… didn't like them. It wasn't the same thing at all. "You may take it as you like," he shrugged, his usual response to such a situation.

Natsumi entered from the back just then, adjusting her little apron. She'd just arrived for her afternoon shift and had overhead them chatting. "It's okay to be afraid of needles. They hurt and they're kind of scary," she said innocently. Himiko and Sakura burst out laughing while Akabane hid his expression beneath the brim of his back hat.

"As it seems, I have no choice but to bow to public opinion in the form of peer pressure," he sighed dramatically, flopping down on the booth. It let out that plastic fart that only restaurant booths and cheaply upholstered vinyl chairs are capable of making.

Sakura dedicatedly applied needles and pressure to the appropriate places along his body. "Would you say it was more of a low abdomen ache or a back spinal pain along the ribcage?"

"Lower body and nausea," he answered as she adjusted a few of the devices intended to push on his pressure points. "Really, I doubt the ability of needles and magnets to cure a virus."

"Have a little more faith in ancient healing techniques. If they didn't work they wouldn't have survived being handed down through the ages."

He hated to admit it, but the sickness did let up relatively quickly. Eventually, the pressure-pain let up entirely, leaving him feeling like one does after letting out gas pressure through a good fart. In fact, he felt the best he had in three days. Of course, he was reluctant to admit this, and just shrugged the treatment off as "okay."

It was in the middle of a heated Go battle between Sakura and Himiko when the Get Backers finally returned, looking bedraggled, muddy, and wet. "What happened to you?" Paul asked. "And don't drip on the wood floor." Natsumi, in the meantime, rushed them fresh dishrags to wash their faces with.

"The client never showed, and the transmission failed out so we had to push-start the Lady Bug in the rain, on a dirt road, going uphill on a mountain," Ban growled, yanking mud chunks out of his hair.

"Ban-chan, where are we going to get the money to fix the car if we can't use the car to get jobs?" Ginji whimpered, tears in his big brown eyes.

"You already have a client waiting," Paul yawned, gesturing. Seeing Sakura, Ban and Ginji's eyes lit up with brilliant boy sparkles. Rushing over to Sakura, they gripped and kissed her hands.

"What do you need, Sakura-chan," Ginji asked, hope shining in his eyes.

"Actually," Sakura stammered, a sweat drop hanging off her head wrap. "I just came to bring the scarf you left at my brother's place back," she said, handing Ginji the scarf in the manila envelope. "Your client fell asleep."

"Huh?" Ginji asked, looking down into Sakura's lap where she was pointing. Akabane was indeed asleep, his head cradled in Sakura's lap. Ginji turned tare and leaped backwards, fear flaming in the black dots that had become his eyes. "Ah-Akabane-san!" he cried, flailing his stubs of arms.

Akabane opened his eyes upon hearing his name. "Huh?" he muttered in that daze that accompanies being suddenly jerked out of near-sleep.

"You seemed so exhausted that I didn't have the heart to wake you," Sakura explained, sitting him upright as he rubbed his eyes.

"Wha-what is HE doing here?" Ban shouted, hair seeming to puff up more than usual in anger.

"I came here to hire you to get something back," Akabane answered, smiling brightly. "Is that not what you do?"

Ginji shook like a leaf, hiding on Ban's shoulders. "We don't take jobs from monsters like you!"

"Are you sure that's wise?" Paul asked. "You do need to get your transmission repaired…"

"Don't… don't tell HIM that!" Ban screamed. "Besides, what could he possibly need US to do? He's a transporter, mortal enemy of the Get Backer!"

"I need you to get back my memories," Akabane answered quietly, standing up in the booth and brushing past Sakura. "Twelve days were stolen from me, and I want to confront those responsible. Your… Jagan… it can help me."

"The ja-" Ban began to say that the Jagan was not the same as cheap hypnotism, and that he couldn't recover lost memories. Then he'd realized that Akabane had money, and didn't know that. He could just make up a few memories and charge for it, and then he'd be on his way to the repair shop to get a new transmission. "-gan costs as much as a new transmission, if you actually come here to request me to use it. I also can't be held liable for any permanent mental damage caused by asking for such a favor."

Akabane nodded gravely, actually not what Ban had expected. "I understand there are both risk and cost involved," he answered slowly, reaching into the inner pocket of his upper coat. He removed a large pile of bills, waving it slightly so the bills flapped like tongues rasping and taunting a drooling Ban and Ginji.

"Thankyoufordoingbusinesswithus," Ban said, grabbing for the cash. Akabane drew it back with lightning speed.

"Getting paid before doing the job isn't the way of our kind, is it?" he asked, smiling innocently.

Ban narrowed his eyes in irritation. "Fine. Let's get this over with quickly so you can pay me all the faster. Any clues for me to work on?"

Akabane looked down at his folded, gloved hands. "The last memory I have is trying to light my cigarette, then waking up with a cut on my abdomen." He paused. "No, there's more. I remember seeing… a reverse shadow."

Ginji blinked. "What's a reverse shadow?"

"You know how, in the movies, when people barely remember someone or something they saw, they remember a shadowy figure? I remember a shadowy black background with a blurry figure. He's so white he looks as though he were made of light, and-" the words broke off, and no one pressured him to say more.

Ban frowned. That wasn't much to go on. At least, that way, he could make up a memory that would fit with relative ease.

"Okay, let's just get this done," Ban said, lifting Akabane's head by the chin so he could see his eyes under the hat. Akabane didn't like it, but said nothing. Ban blinked twice, then focused, concentrated, and…

"OW! OW! FREAKING HELL! BLOODY OH HELL!" Ban screamed, grabbing his eyes and falling backwards, thrashing on the floor.

Ginji grabbed Akabane by the shirt, shaking him harshly. "What did you do to him!?"

"I didn't do anything," Akabane protested, feeling the heat radiating from Ginji's hands coming through the thin fabric of his shirt.

"Liar!" Ginji shouted, tears in his eyes, his body crackling with angry electricity. Himiko grabbed Natsumi and pulled the girl behind the counter. Paul, for his part, pulled Sakara back behind a support beam. The air felt heavy about Akabane and he choked, suffocating suddenly. Suddenly, his stomach hurt more than it had in days. It felt like he was being ripped apart from the inside out.

"No, Ginji!" Ban cried, grabbing Ginji's ankle with one hand while the other remained clamped over his eyes. "I can't believe I'm saying this, but he didn't do it."

Ginji calmed immediately, dropping Akabane against the plastic seat. His body made a loud thud when he landed, and no one seemed to notice that he wasn't moving beyond the slight twitch of his long fingers.

It took a few moments, but they got Ban into a stool. Natsumi ran him out a cold cloth from the back room.

"Geeze, it burns," Ban fumed, holding the cloth.

"What happened?" Himiko asked, her hand on his shoulder. "I've never… no, rarely, heard you scream like that?"

"There's some… thing… something like a seal in there. It attacked me when I tried to use the Jagan." Ban slowly lowered the cloth, resulting in a gasp rising up from those gathered about him. The tissues about both his eyes were swollen and already turning brown-black-blue, as though he'd suffered from a nasty bar fight. "I saw a symbol like this," Ban said, scribbling with red ink on a napkin. "It's like they burned it right into my mind," he said, scribbling.

Sakura leaned over. "It looks like a corporate logo and a rune stone had a baby." Akabane-san, does this symbol mean anything to you? Akabane-san?"

Natsumi, standing by Akabane, looked up in concern. "His shirt is all bloody."

Sakura crossed over and assisted Natsumi by yanking open Akabane's clothes. "The stitches burst," Sakura diagnosed, pointing to a line of fine thread poking at odd intervals out of his skin and an ooze of blood escaping from that site.

"I know what to do!" Natsumi cried, running into the kitchen.

Twenty minutes or so later, Akabane slowly came back to consciousness. He wasn't sure why he'd passed out, and the moments leading up to him passing out were vague and confused in his head. The first thing he became aware of was that the breeze he felt was from his pants and shirt being torn open, a damp dishtowel shoved into his underwear. He blinked, trying to clear his hazy mind. Was it a party? "Why am I half undressed?"

"Your stitches tore open in the commotion. Natsumi fixed them temporarily," Himiko answered.

"The girl? How?"

Natsumi blushed and grinned, shyly holding up a tube of superglue. "I heard about some doctors using superglue for surgery."

"You… superglued me together?" he asked, amazed and slightly annoyed. His fingers traced the brown stain where blood had spread over his shirt. It was less obvious where it had stained his pants. "It shouldn't have torn open. I've had it for slightly over a week. It should have healed…"

"At any rate, you need to see someone to repair those stitches," Himiko said, shaking her head at him.

Akabane turned his head away. "It's not an option for me to go to a hospital." They'd likely want to feel his stomach. What if they did x-rays? Despite logic, it was possible to capture his hidden blades on an x-ray image. That always lead to awkward explanations, often overshadowing the real reason he'd been taken to the hospital in the first place. Then there were those who feared his abilities, or who had actually tried to harm him because of them, he thought as he fingered the scars on the backs of his hands. No, he wouldn't go to a hospital. Of course, he could just take the blades out before going, but he'd rather walk around Infinite Castle naked than go anywhere unarmed.  
"If you're worried about the doctor recognizing you and turning you in, you could go to Gen. He wouldn't turn you in," Himiko suggested.

Of course, though he wouldn't admit it, he never would have thought of going to the Infinite Castle for healing instead of battling. Even in the times he'd suffered massive wounds in the fortress, he hadn't gone to Gen to be treated like the others. He'd dragged himself home and nursed his own wounds. He preferred being alone with his pain, even if it could be terribly lonely binding your own wounds in silence.

Sakura left with the still light-headed Akabane, owing to the fact that Akabane claimed he didn't know how to get to the healer's workplace. After a few minutes of just sitting in silence, Himiko looked over at the sullen Ban. "You want to go after him, don't you?"

"I normally wouldn't give a piece about that monster one way or another, but…" he gestured to the black circles about his eyes. "It's personal now. Whoever left that trap tangled with the wrong master of the Jagan," Ban answered, slamming a fist down on the bar table. "Ginji, you stay here. I'm going to find out what's going on."

"But Ban-chan, I want to go with you?"

"And take the risk of the Infinite Castle yet again? Heck, I wouldn't be surprised if they did this to him JUST to lure your soft-heart there."

"You both stay!" Himiko snapped. "I'll go and report back to you."

"You can't go alone! You'll get killed!"

"Oh, so you're saying I can't take care of myself?" Himiko snarled at Ban.

While the three argued violently about who was capable of going where and why, Sakura lead Akabane to Gen's little "infirmary," where he found the String Master visiting the old man's mannish granddaughter. This was of no concern of Akabane's; he neither cared for nor against the thread user. As a former subordinate to the Thunder Emperor, he severed as no milestone for Akabane to measure his power against.

There was an awkward moment where the friends greeted one another, awkward not for them but for Akabane because he was distinctly excluded from the greeting.

It was while the friends reacquainted with one another that a movement from the back caught Akabane's attention. A combination of curiosity and propensity towards finding someone worth challenging propelled him to follow the darting figure. He left the others to their conversation.

About a minute later, the greetings ended. "So, what can I do for you today?" Gen asked, looking directly at Sakura.

"It's not for me, Akabane-san's stitches are… eh? Where'd he go? He was here a minute ago…"

Akabane, meanwhile, was still following the mysterious dart through the castle maze. He felt vaguely like Alice in Wonderland yet again, although his quarry was certainly something other than a white rabbit.

He was lead to a massive round structure made up of a cage of iron bars. At first glance it appeared to be a large circular prison cell. Upon closer inspection, thick black cables winding like snakes out of the top revealed it to be an antiquated hotel of the kind common to the old four-star hotels.

"Am I to get inside?" Akabane asked the empty air. He was getting bored and irritated with playing games, and he had to go to the bathroom.

His answer came in the form of the hallway behind him swelling shut like a grotesque horror movie scene. It left no direction to walk but into the elevator. Subtly wasn't a key feature of those who pulled the strings in Infinite Castle. However, it worked for him. If they'd asked him to play more games with them he might have left.

The elevator doors slammed shut behind his back with the oppressive clank of metal connection, making the elevator feel all the more like a prison. It jerked violently as it rose upward into the black shaft. The jerk was enough to nearly throw Akabane off his feet. Overhead, he could hear huge gears churning, but he could not see them for the darkness.

It was then that he realized he was completely caged, in bars that he probably would not be able to break through due to their nature as part of the Infinite Castle, and being pulled through a tunnel so black it was as if the world about him had ceased to exist. There was a likelihood that he was now a captive of the Gods of Infinite Castle, and a possibility he would never see another sunset again.

At least, he thought, I am no longer bored.


	3. The Seed of Destruction

In the lone spot of light coming through ruined stained-glass windows, a single rose bush somehow thrived among the faint tones of blue and red cast across its leaves. The bush itself looked healthy, thick and lush with leaves. Upon closer inspection, however, five of the six tiny rosebuds on it had withered and fallen from their stems.

A white-gloved hand reached out and gently caressed the single remaining bud. "One of out of six experiments remains," a man's voice said behind the man who was gently tending to the pruning of the roses. Beneath the bush, a small porcelain doll in a rose-print dress stared out at the world through blue glass eyes. "Our superiors will be very unhappy with the expenses they've granted you if the last bud fails to thrive."

The caretaker just smiled, wisps of white hair touching his lips. "The remaining blossom is the strongest because it doesn't have to share the nutrients with the others, and I know personally of the strength of its stalk. The last flower will not fall."

With that, the two picked up and departed, leaving the rose bush alone in the rainbow of colors coming in through the remains of the window.

Meanwhile, the search for Akabane was on in Infinite Castle, despite the fact that no one actually hoped they would be the one to find him. It was Sakura, however, who got the distressing news. A young man smoking cigarette butts out of an ashtray reported having seen him getting into a black elevator.

"This is very bad," Gen mumbled. The _Gondola_ is Babylon City's transport device. It can move sideways, up, down, whatever way it wants within Infinite Castle. Babylon City must be very interested in him to send something like that to fetch him."

Inside the elevator, Akabane was sitting with his knees drawn up to his chest. The rocking movement of the device had caused his stomach, which had been relatively fine, to become uncomfortably queasy.

The world beyond the bars was black. He tried to stick his fingers out between the bars and found a force-shield preventing him from doing so. So he sat and waited patiently but alertly to find out where he was being taken. The elevator kind of hummed as it rocked back and forth, but the rocking combined with the sound of metal squealing against metal was far from comforting.

The elevator passed through complete darkness, so black that even Akabane's eyes, which were used to the darkness, could not make out any shapes. A cold wind blew against his skin, and he wrapped his arms around himself for warmth. His hair ruffled about his neck, tickling him.

When the elevator passed back into light, he wrapped his arms around himself tighter, as he found himself removed of his usual garments. In their place was a thin white gown of the kind that would be found in hospitals. The cotton garment was short-sleeved and only ran to just above his knees, causing him to shiver in the breeze that was blowing through the bars. That, and the back was open, leading him to use one hand to hold it tightly closed while the other hand tried to warm his goose-bump covered legs. This day was going from bad to worse, and he hadn't killed anyone yet. The next person he saw had better be ready to explain what had happened, lest they lose important bodily organs.

The doors finally slid open to reveal a plain white room resembling the typical Americanized notion of a doctor's office. The furniture was garish and plastic, an orange color that looked as though it were designed so you couldn't tell if it had vomit stains on it. The pictures on the wall were inspirational tripe, like a kitten dangling from a branch with the words "always hang on!" written in cartoonish bubbles across it.

The main feature of the room was an examination table with several long wires and scary looking boxes hanging from the ceiling above it. He held tighter to the closure of the thin outfit he'd been forced into. If they thought he was just going to lie down and let a stranger do what they wanted with him, they would lose a few fingers in the process…

"Welcome," a friendly voice greeted. He spun quickly on his heel, slipping slightly because socks don't grip well on tile. The flamboyant blonde Kagami Kyoji stood behind him.

"Enjoying the view?" Akabane quipped, knives drawn and glowing in one hand. "I did not expect to see you today, Kyoji-kun."

"I'm here because you know me, in the sense that you've served as my pawn before, so they figured you were less likely to poke me full of little holes on sight." He looked at Akabane's hand. "I see they were wrong." The light caught on his earring, giving it almost a mischievous glint. "When you came in, our sensors picked up something very interesting inside your body. We thought we'd like to take a look at it."

Akabane held his ground, but the heel further from Kagami was raised up so that his weight as balanced on the front of his foot, indicating he was ready to move if he needed to. He wasn't just going to lie down and obey like a sweet little puppy. "Why should I let you do such a thing?"

"Look around you. There are cameras and scanners recording your every breath. You'd never escape, no matter how hard you tried. You can choose to cooperate freely or as our prisoner. It's your choice, and what you pick doesn't matter to me one way or the other.

Akabane conceded that in the situation it was best to at least pretend to submit. He lowered his eyes in resignation, a gesture which Kagami did not fail to notice. "Kyoji-kun? If I must, I'd prefer that this examination be done in private," he emphasized, leaning against a wall.

"You want me to turn around?" Kagami asked, sounding mock-hurt.

"I meant the cameras recording my every move and my every breath. Do you suppose they could be turned off? I dislike the idea of finding explicit pictures of myself posted on the internet."

Kagami snorted. "You think you have it bad? I can't even take a pee without them knowing the arc of my urine."

Akabane knew that the comment was supposed to relax him and lighten the mood, but it didn't. "Where are my clothes?" he asked, looking out the single window in the room. The skyline of Tokyo was hidden by a big block of twisted metal, making him feel all the more alone and vulnerable before Kagami's eyes.

"Taken care of. Don't worry about them."

The "doctor" Babylon City provided was a lean, anemic looking older man with thinning gray hair. He reminded Akabane vaguely of Gandalf from the Lord of the Rings movie. That's what Akabane decided to think of him as, since he didn't want to think of the man attaching strange wires all over his body as someone in his former profession.

"Gandalf" had a very energetic personality, chattering constantly about the weather and other nonsense as he worked on setting up a series of wires and metal tubes about the wound. He brushed against it once, causing Akabane to involuntarily jerk violently and throw several of the wires off. He avoided it cautiously after that.

"Why are you putting them on my chest?" Akabane asked, eyes narrowing. "They wound is below my navel."

"Well, we'll see…" Gandalf said, flicking on a series of reading monitors. "How does that feel? Comfortable?"

"No. I'm tired," Akabane answered. The machines were cold, and felt like little shocks of static electricity passing over his body. He'd pulled aside what little garments Akabane had been given in order to let the machine work better, leaving him feeling uncomfortably naked beneath Kagami's bright eyes.

"That's understandable, seeing how many new blood vessels your body is busily building…"

Akabane tried to squirm into an upright position so as to better see the image on the screen. "A tumor?" he asked, concern radiating outward from his voice. Kagami pushed his shoulders back down onto the chilly plastic so that he would not dislodge the equipment lying over his prone form.

"No. It seems to be come kind of tissue implant," Kagami answered instead of the doctor, pointing to a vaguely triangular wad facing with the point toward towards his legs. "You can see the network of blood vessels and even nerves growing into and out of it." Kagami turned to the doctor, looking very irritated. "They must have implanted stem cells to manage growing nerves, and that's very advanced technology. But, Babylon City has the technology to create and control adult stem cells as well, does it not?"

The Gandalf-doctor looked down as his shoes, aged face studying the contours of the loafers in either deep thought or shame at the answer he was going to have to give Kagami. "Babylon City has always been concerned with computer technology, not biotechnology," he answered slowly. It was true; otherwise they would have been able to generate bodies for their experimental puppets capable of leaving the boundaries of the castle.

Akabane realized that Kagami wasn't just holding him down to keep him from messing up the equipment; he was rather forcibly pressing Akabane's body into the plastic. One hand was stroking Akabane's hair. Akabane knew the gesture was meant to be calming and comforting, but instead it agitated him. He hadn't given Kagami permission to touch his hair freely, let alone stroke him like a pet. He tried to sit up again, but discovered that Kagami's grip on his arm had become so vise-like that it was painful to try to move.

The doctor pulled out a long, relatively thick needle. Akabane eyed the man very suspiciously, as he didn't trust someone who looked like a character out of a movie to stick a needle that long into him. Seeming to notice that he'd tensed, the doctor-Gandalf calmly explained, "I need to take a tissue sample so we can determine exactly what they put into you. This will probably leave some muscle soreness…"

Akabane hesitated, then nodded. He probably didn't have much a choice, considering that he didn't know where he was in the castle and that Kagami was pinning him against the sheets. Kagami put a hand in front of Akabane's eyes, blocking him so that he couldn't see the needle going in. Perhaps it was all for the better. Funny that a hundred scalpels piercing his flesh would hardly bother him, but one little needle and he felt like his skin were crawling off the muscles and fat of his body.

There was a momentary breeze of cold air against his hip as the doctor pulled aside what little bit of the hospital gown he still had on, not taking as much care for Akabane's modesty as Akabane himself would have preferred. The doctor began to cautiously push the needle inward. Without warning, after he had reached maybe two inches in, his head suddenly snapped back. He dropped away from the needle, writhing on the floor while clutching his wrist and crying out in a bestial manner. Kagami ran to the doctor's side, leaving Akabane free to jerk upright. The wires dislodged from his body as a shock of pain ran through the muscle the needle was still hanging out of. Akabane looked down, and upon spotting the needle, immediately realized that his nausea had returned. Thus, he threw up all over the floor of the faux hospital room.

Kagami, meanwhile, has managed to pry the doctor's hand off of the wound. A massive red welt spread over the hand, looking like a burn that had been struck repeatedly with a meat tenderizer. Kagami whistled when he saw the damage, assisting the whimpering man in staggering to the sink to wash the wound with cold water. As they washed the wound over, a shape began to appear. Left pale white and untouched in the center of the wound, the same logo that Ban had drawn proudly taunted the three men. "It's a copyright," Kagami commented dryly. He let the doctor crawl off to tend to the wound on his own, as he'd been programmed with the knowledge to do so.

"Someone… someone _trademarked_ me?" Akabane asked, still dry heaving, for once letting true anger creep into his voice. His left hand was curled tightly around the edge of the examination table, so tightly that his knuckles were white and bloodless. His other hand held where the needle went into his skin, fingertips covered in blood.

Kagami stood up, watching as a nondescript blue-eyed woman with blonde pigtails entered the room and went about the duty of removing the needle from Akabane's body. Kagami's normally light, humor-filled eyes had taken on the dark seriousness that he gained when he was fighting an enemy without limit. "Have you ever heard of Rune Biotechnology?"

"No. Should I have?" Akabane asked coldly, wincing as she pulled the needle out and applied gauze and pressure to the hole it had left.

"Not unless you took a particular interest in the field. They work through a thousand puppet companies, masking their identity, much as the colonies of organizations that keep this castle supplied do. Those, you might have heard of. As you might have overheard us saying, while Infinite Castle is the undisputed leader in technology, they lead in illegal biology. There's even been talk that they've managed to create cloned organs through the use of specially bred pigs."

Akabane's hand covered his wound. "If they are responsible, then I will have to have a word with their heads." By which he meant, a word followed by the removal of some heads.

Kagami didn't respond to Akabane's comment, instead choosing to look with great concern upon the image of the implant, still frozen on the screen. His mouth was drawn tightly into a thin line of either concern or concentration.

A second girl, identical to the first down to the mole on her cheek, entered the room. Akabane realized that they were what, in gaming terms, would be called an "NPC." They were endless clones of the same character controlled by a hive-like memory collective, used to serve as gophers and servants. They had no real purpose in existing except that they were necessary for the important characters to go about their business.

"Kagami-sama, something happened when we tried to repair the doctors programming. It could be a virus. You should have a look at it," the second girl said, her voice concerned but her face expressionless.

Kagami nodded, heading for the door. Akabane stood up, pushing aside the girl who had been poking at the needle hole with an antiseptic wipe. "I want to go with you."

"No," Kagami snapped. "You sit back down."

"If this concerns this… thing inside me, then I have a right to know."

"It doesn't. It concerns the doctor."

"Gan- the doctor was wounded by the thing," Akabane argued, "the thing inside MY body."

"I said no, and believe me when I say that I'd let you come if the matter concerned you." He turned his attention sharply to the girl, who was standing aside in a sort of stupor. "Take care of him. Keep him comfortable and warm. Oh, and get him a pair of pants. I think he feels… vulnerable," Kagami smiled before disappearing out the single door set in the room.

Akabane angrily chased Kagami to the door. When he yanked it open, however, he was met with what appeared to be a solid brick wall on the other side of the door. After a few attempts to cut through the door only to have the wall reassemble before his eyes, his shoulders sagged and he sank down onto the couch.

The girl brought him a rough, loosely knit white blanket and a pillow that smelled of disinfectant, both of which he pushed on the floor. She stubbornly tried again to lay the blanket over him as he crouched on his side on the couch. When he threw them off again the girl looked as though she might cry. "Kagami-sama told me to keep you warm," she whimpered, trying once again to give him the blanket.

Akabane looked up at her with one eye, then through her to the window. Of course. He slowly sat up. "I would be very warm and comfortable if you opened the wind to let the breeze in, and if you gave me my coat and hat so that the wind wouldn't chill me."

The girl smiled, delighted at being able to do what Kagami-sama had told her to, and obediently did as Akabane had asked. "Next," Akabane said. "Could you go to the little vending stand on the first level that has the panda sign over the top and get me a weak green tea with lemon and honey? I only want the tea from the place with the panda."

She disappeared out the door seemingly right through the brick wall with a smile, eager to fetch the exact drink he'd wanted. "Idiot," he declared out loud upon her departure. He hadn't asked for all of his clothes as that might have made her suspicious of his intent to escape via the window, not because he actually liked the cruddy blue scrub pants Kagami had given him.

Fortunately, the ledge outside the window was just large enough for Akabane to crawl along on all fours. The wind tore violently at his body. The speed and smell of the breeze told him that he was pretty far up, but he dared not look down for fear that he might loose his nerve.

He followed Kagami's dusty, blood-lust and curiosity tinted scent to a room a floor up and two rooms down, which required some degree of monkey-like clamoring over the crumbling ledges to get to. Peering inside, he spotted the doctor strapped to a table, his arm no more than a spinning vortex of data and symbols. So that was what the girl had meant by "it might be a virus." The man had been no more than another computer simulation.

The window was open just a touch, but that was all Akabane needed to hear the conversation. "If they armed it with a virus, they must have been expecting us to get involved," Kagami's voice was saying.

"He still doesn't know the nature of what he carries inside himself, does he?" an unfamiliar male voice probed. "The seed of destruction…"

"We can thank whoever wiped his memories in order to have room to implant that seal for that," Kagami answered. Akabane wished he could see who Kagami was talking to, but he didn't dare look through the window lest he be caught before he found out any useful information. "It's still very iffy what will happen at this point, though. They've got at least twenty days out on us because we could detect the heartbeat."

The… heartbeat? The thing inside of him was… alive?! No, no, no reason to jump to that stupid conclusion. They could have been speaking of the virus inside the doctor, or talking about something in a strange medical sense. No reason to worry, at least no reason to worry yet.

"What will you do about it?" The strange voice asked.

"We'd intended to kill it by poisoning it with the biopsy needle, but now it doesn't look like we can get through its defenses."

"I'm glad you failed. Even if _they_ created it, their amazing discovery is now in our hands," the other man answered, his tone of voice indicating that he was gloating.

"The infamous doctor Jackal is not a man who is easily controlled. You'd have to cage him or cut off his fingers in order to keep him."

Disgust flushed through Akabane. So that was why he hadn't been invited into this conversation. Well, they were right about one thing. He had absolutely no intent of being their prisoner because they wanted to play rival companies with whoever had violated his body.

The sound of the door being thrown open suddenly and with great force reverberated through the room. "Kagami-sama! Kagami-sama! He's gone! He's gone!"

"Who's gone?" the strange voice asked, angrily barking at the panting girl.

"The man with the womb implant and the baby! I left to get him tea and when I returned-"

The rest of the words ran into a blur as shock coursed through Akabane's body, numbing him all over. He felt as though he'd just drank anesthesia for the fun of it. That couldn't… there was no way… well, yes, the implant had sort of looked like a deformed womb… but… he… last time he took a pee, he was still very much a man, thank you VERY much!"

He tried to move backwards on the ledge but in his shock, he put his knee down wrong on a decorative slant. His knee slid sideways, throwing his whole body off balance. Still numb, he tried to catch the railing but moved too slowly. Off the ledge his body rolled, plummeting head-first down from the tall building.

The wind ruffled his long black hair past his eyes. All the sound in the world seemed to stop for a moment save for the sound his coat made as it slapped against his legs. He'd fallen from one of the upper levels of the Beltline, and he was going to die. There was nothing near enough to reach out to and slow his drop, nothing but air moving past his face and the hard ground growing ever closer below.

Then, out of the silence, he heard a woman's- no, a girl's- voice screaming, and before his eyes, a massive block of solid color spread out. Is this what death is like, he wondered as he fell downward into the field of color.


	4. Bazooka Pistolero

"Are you okay?" Sakura gasped as she held onto the side of a wall. "That was really close. If I hadn't looked up, or if you'd fallen from any higher," she whispered between pants, voice breathless from the adrenaline rush that had filled her when she had deployed her power.

"No, I'm not," was the short answer Akabane gave, also balancing himself on a wall. He was partially doubled over, holding his pained stomach. His whole body felt like he'd done a belly flop off the high board at the pool, or should that analogy fail, like he'd been slapped repeatedly over his entire nude body with the palm of someone's hand.

Sakura took a step forward. So did Akabane, then he slid down to the ground and sat, breathing deeply. A single hiccup managed to escape as he huddled against a trash can. "I just need to rest for a moment. I'll be fine." He didn't want her to come over and try to give him help he didn't need. The stinging sensation was almost entirely gone, owing to the healing power of the castle, and he was afraid he might hurt the sweet girl if she approached him.

Unmoved by his comments, Sakura came up to him and moved to assist him. Akabane quickly raised his bent arm, blocking her gesture with his elbow. "I didn't give you permission to touch me," he choked. The examination had filled up more than a week's worth of his tolerance for physical contact that he hadn't initiated. Did they think he covered every inch of his body from his neck to his feet with fabric because he liked sweating through the entire summer?

She timidly backed off. "I jut wanted to help," she protested weakly as he gathered up his hat from where it had lightly fluttered to the ground. Sometimes he was certain that damn thing had a mind of its own.

"I don't need any," he answered, knowing he was lying. He needed more help than he had words to describe. Had he given into his primal instincts, he would have collapsed into her arms and remained there as long as he possibly could, weakened by shock and disbelief. Then, realizing he did need at least one form of help, he sheepishly looked up at her from beneath his hat. "Where is the exit?"

"Exit? But I haven't taken you to Gen yet..."

He clenched his middle tighter, feeling pain as his fingers dug into his own skin. "It is no longer necessary. As inadvisable as it is, I am going to sew my own wounds with a mirror."

"But..." she began to protest, but stopped when she saw the icy look he was giving her. Not wanting to fight, she surrendered and directed him to depart. Back at Gen's, Himiko arrived too late to take part in the missing Akabane excitement, but she did arrive in time to see a rather distraught Sakura returning with red, puffy eyes. "I only wanted to help him," she sniffled. "He didn't have to be so _mean."_

Himiko put an arm around Sakura's shoulders. "It's not your fault. He's an unpleasant man, at best. Getting along with others isn't in his strengths."

"Still," Sakura choked quietly. She knew she shouldn't be bothered by the actions of a man so many people despised, but she couldn't help it. It was one of those human irrationalities in dealing with emotion.

"Well," a male voice chirped from behind the girls, startling the two girls. "I come down to run a simple errand and I get to see my honey in the process! What a sweet deal!"

"Kagami!" Himiko snarled. "I'm not your honey."

"So spunky," Kagami sighed romantically. "Anyway, as I said, I have an errand to complete. Getting to see your angry face was just a perk. Gods, but you're beautiful when you're angry."

Himiko raised an eyebrow suspiciously, setting herself between Kagami and Sakura. "Errand?"

He nodded his head, pale blonde hair bobbing about his neck. "I thought Dr. Jackal might want his clothes back, since he left in such a hurry that he forgot them. But, I see he isn't here."

"His clothes? Why would you have his clothes?" Himiko asked, voice seemingly hinting at a potential sexual reason. "At any rate, I'm sure I'll eventually have a job with him. I can take them to him..."

"It's a long story," Kagami taunted, setting down the box of garments. "Have him give me a call when you talk to him, will you? I want to discuss the matters of the baby with him."

Himiko blinked, all her defenses raised. She knew she was weak when the safety of children was involved. Did Kagami? "What baby?" she asked, voice frozen.

"The poor little one that's at his mercy. I feel bad for it, really. Barely a month old, and probably won't live to see two months with him involve-"

Himiko stopped Kagami's speech by slamming her fist down hard on the table. In her head she was seeing a warm, pink little bundle wrapped in blankets and cooing to itself. Of course, she really couldn't be blamed for having such a mental image. Kagami had constructed his speech as such. "I'm not leaving a baby in _that man's hands_. However, if you're lying to me, I'll return here and rip out your spleen with my bare hands for toying with my emotions!"

A sweat drop decorated Kagami's face as Himiko stormed past him, muttering to herself. "She's so beautiful when she's violent..."

"Perhaps you should take a moment to think this out!" Sakura shouted as she chased Himiko past Kagami, carrying Akabane's clothes under her arm. She panted as she tried to keep pace with the fuming Himiko. "He's a very strong fighter, isn't he?"

"Not as strong as I am when I'm royally pissed off," Himiko snarled, even though both girls knew that it wasn't true. Akabane was much older and more experienced in fighting than either of the girls, if no other skill level difference existed between the three. She slung one blue-spandex clad leg over the side of her small motorbike, then coolly looked up at Sakura. "Are you in or out?" she asked, eyes flaming as she referred with a hand gesture to the sidecar of her bike.

Sakura was deeply worried about the woman she regarded as one of her few close female friends. She got into the sidecar if only to make sure that Himiko wouldn't do something in her haste that would make the black figure of Doctor Jackal kill her. As Himiko waved dangerously in and out of traffic, Sakura closed her eyes out and cried out as a truck blared its massive horns at the tiny bike. "Perhaps you shouldn't drive while angry!" she cried out.

Himiko ignored her, pulling her bike into a slot marked for bicycle parking (by which Sakura assumed they actually meant non-motorized bicycle parking, but considering Himiko's mood, she didn't dare correct her.) Sakura looked up at the ancient high-rise. At one time it had been a lavish place, as the rusted wrought iron decorations and crumbling decorations attested. "This is where someone like Jackal-san lives?"

"This is where he lived as of six months ago, which doesn't necessarily mean he's still there," Himiko answered, swinging one of her perfume bottles in the direction of the door to the lobby. The lock turned red-orange, rusting and corroding before their eyes.

"What are you doing?" Sakura cried. "You've lost all sense of reason!" After all, most powerful humans didn't display their abilities openly or use them for trivial matters.

"Do you think he'd let us in if we called him and nicely asked for a cup of tea? Stay with the bike; I left it running. I'm going to save that baby and we're going to run before he can come after us."

"Are you sure it needs to be saved?" Sakura asked as she stepped back towards Himiko's bike. "I mean, if it is his own child... we don't know anything about the situation! We just have one sentence from an unsavory source!"

Himiko calmed, shoulders slumping forward. "You're right," she admitted. "I'm just sensitive about the safety of children. But you're right, I should know the situation before I rush-"

The noise was almost deafening, following by a rush of hot air and soot that caught the girls by surprise. Sakura fell over, landing on her side, as Himiko jumped into attack stance. "What was that?" Sakura cried, tending to her skinned elbow and her wounded pride.

Himiko pointed upward to a small black puff of smoke. "Something exploded." She looked back at Sakura. "You don't think..." Himiko turned and ran into the building, knowing her time to find the baby if Akabane were involved were limited before the police and news crews would arrive. She had maybe two minutes, maximum. Himiko gasped and panted as she raced up the stairs, praying there wouldn't be a second explosion. She had to push past panicking families fleeing down the stairs with blanket-wrapped children. Fortunately, she was athletic enough to break through the crowd on the level where the smoke blew.

She coughed on the fumes, finding a crowd gathered around what remained of a darkened doorframe. They should be running, not curiosity seeking, Himiko thought in anger. What if something else exploded, or there were a fire? They'd be killed, or at least stampede.

She found Akabane on the edges of the crowd, leaning against the smooth white hallway and pushing away a woman trying to push a wet cloth onto his face.

"Akabane-san?" she asked.

"If I hadn't have wanted to clean the bathroom, I'd likely be dead," he answered in a monotone voice, not looking at Himiko. "There was a bomb under the sink... with the cleaning supplies... I only knew what one looks like... because-" he coughed. "I only had enough time to grab my laptop and run." He was shivering slightly and Himiko noticed for the first time that he didn't have a shirt on beneath his coat. "I got halfway down the hall when it went off," he told her, clutching the computer to his exposed chest.

"Never mind the computer, what about the baby? Is the baby safe?"

His head snapped up, eyes absolutely frozen. "What did Kagami say to you?" he asked in a tone that stung with acidity.

"How did you know Kagami said anything?" she asked, feeling a twinge of actual fear. She hadn't felt that way about him since the first time she'd had to work with him. At the time she hadn't get learned the basic principals for interaction with and control of Dr. Jackal, so he'd absolutely terrified her. She'd been convinced he had intentions of drinking her blood before the night was over. When she realized he was only doing it for the purpose of terrorizing her, however, and called him on it he got easier to deal with. For a moment, she considered how odd it was that the man whose sanity she could honestly fear had turned to a dull nuisance feeling of dislike towards him. He could choose to kill her at any moment, but once you got to working with him, there was a feeling that if you just left him to do his thing... he wouldn't.

"Just that you had a baby in your hands and you were going to kill it."

"So I see. The... the baby that you refer to is not in my hands, but I believe it's... fine." Even Himiko noticed the particular odd emphasis on the way he'd said the word hands, but as the two minute time limit was rapidly approaching, getting the two of them out of there without police intervention was a higher priority than questioning his word choice.

"Did he lie to me?" she asked as she pulled Akabane to his feet. "I threatened to rip out his spleen if he- Akabane!" she screamed, as he'd suddenly taken off down the hallway. She chased him, only able to keep up with him because he wasn't using his ability to move inhumanly fast. "Come back here, damn you!"

The reason he'd wanted to clean the tub was that it was dripping with his own blood, a few bent scalpels lying in a halo about his body. He'd picked up the ones that were still salvageable. He'd tried to attack the thing inside his body by direction his blades at it. When he had been about to deal with it, a feeling of extreme peace and not pain, strangely, had filled his body for a moment before his weapons had been violently ejected out of his body. It was just like that battle with Ginji, if he'd been meditating when Ginji had torn his flesh apart.

He ended up having to sit in the stairwell, lungs choked with smoke to the point where his coughing made him unable to run. Blood loss made him dizzy, so he clung to the railing to avoid falling. Himiko caught up with him then, chest heaving from the effort of having to chase him down the hallway. Being taller than her, he could take larger steps, and thus she had to try harder to match his pace than he did. "Why did you run away?"

He didn't answer Himiko because he was thinking about why he'd attacked the thing in the first place. "I heard its heart beating."

"What?" Himiko asked.

"Nothing..." he answered, standing back up."I should go until the panic dies down. It's not good for me to be in highly public situations." He stumbled as he tried to walk and fell, tumbling down four steps before coming to rest on the landing.

"Akabane?" Himiko asked, clamoring down the stairs to the landing.

"Is my laptop okay?" he asked, sitting up and trying not to seem concerned. He coughed again, spitting up a bit of bloody phlegm.

"I've never seen you fall before," she answered, "and it's fine, you didn't fall far."

"I was worried, it has my client information in it," he answered, choking on the dryness in his throat.

"Forget about your job for once!" she screamed. "You can't even walk!"

"I lost a lot of blood today," he argued as Himiko forced his arm around her shoulders. His fingers were so white that for a second she thought he'd had his gloves on, then realized she couldn't normally see the fine details of his scars when he did.

"You're not kidding on that one," she remarked. "You should get out of the building before its too late to avoid the police and the news crews. If you lost a lot of blood, you should go to the hospital."

"I can't."

She didn't press him further only because it took all her concentration to get both of them down the stairs without stumbling. She didn't agree with his comment being true, figuring it was a matter of stubborn pride and I won't more than I can't. It must be killing him to need me to move around like this, she thought with a smug satisfaction.

She was having Sakura help him into the sidecar when the man with the camera and the microphone approached them. They'd been lucky, most of the news crews were inside the lobby due to Himiko's having destroyed the lock earlier that would have normally kept them outside.

"Excuse me, can I interview you about the explosion?" he asked as Akabane hid his face from the camera using his hat.

"No, he fell down the stairs while we were getting out of the building. We don't know anything," Himiko snapped, pushing the camera away as she hid her face with her hand. Sakura was hiding behind her headscarf as she helped Akabane adjust himself in the sidecar.

As Himiko drove away the cameraman set down his equipment and picked a cellular phone out of his pocket. "As you said, the experiment was not harmed beyond shock. I still don't understand why we'd blow up someone's apartment when we want to protect them in the long run though. Yes, yes, I know. Don't question your logic. I only hope you know what you're doing, boss... to make him afraid and paranoid, so we can be his only friends in the world. I just think there are better ways to wear someone down and make them dependent. No, I'm not questioning your methods, I'm not! I just- yes, yes sir. I'll do that." With that, he clicked the phone off. His boss could be so... anal sometimes. He almost felt bad for the experiment he'd been assigned to watch. Such a pretty young man, chosen to suffer only because he'd had the unfortunate luck of having been born with purple eyes.

-0-0-

To Be Continued.


	5. Help

Akabane lay back as best he could in Himiko's sidecar. He was built too long for the tiny machine. Sakura was riding behind Himiko, hands around the short-haired woman's waist. "He looks so peaceful," Sakura smiled, looking over and down at him. His eyes were shut, and it was impossible to tell if he was awake or not. "For someone who almost died, that is," she added quickly.

Himiko nodded. "He'll have to talk to the police about it eventually. I just wanted to make sure it wouldn't be from behind the bars of a prison cell." She let the air out of her lungs, still thinking about the issue of the baby. "What am I going to do with him?! There isn't much room at my apartment, and I can't just leave him out in the cold."

Sakura quietly informed Himiko, "My brother is away 'finding himself.' It'd be okay to put him in my brother's room."

"I wouldn't leave a nice girl alone with a… man… like that," Himiko spat, indicating that she'd potentially thought of another word before man. Through some careful posturing on Sakura's behalf, however, Himiko ended up eventually agreeing to at least take Akabane to Sakura's place until he was back on his own feet. It was the only apartment large enough for the three of them to rest comfortably. Himiko kept insisting they would stay only until he'd rested enough to find another place to stay the night.

The first thing Akabane did upon awakening was retreated to the bathroom, bladder urgently full. He shivered, owing to the bathroom at Sakura's place being too cold for his tastes. After he'd gone to the bathroom, Himiko and Sakura insisted that he take a bath to wash the bomb soot off his skin. Reluctantly, he gathered a bunch of wet towels around his hips and crossed his arms over his chest as Sakura quietly dipped her towel in a bucket of herb-water, spreading a healing treatment over the numerous cuts flying pieces of wood had given him. He jerked away from her when she accidentally pushed her towel too deeply into one of his rapidly-healing knife wounds, causing her to apologize ridiculously profoundly to him for her error. Himiko, meanwhile, stood outside the door with her hands over her eyes at Akabane's request, angrily muttering "It's not like I haven't seen him with his shirt off before."

Sakura blushed, embarrassed by how rude Himiko was being. "You must have gotten hit by a lot of shrapnel," she stated, trying to make small talk.

"Yes," he answered, not saying more because he didn't wish to discuss the nature of his larger wounds, as that would lead to discussing _why_ his knives had ejected from his body, which would lead to discussion of… that thing.

Sakura wrung out her cloth, feeling a bit sick when a piece of detached skin fell into the cleaning bucket. "Akabane-san? Himiko-san wanted me to ask what Kagami-san meant when he talked about a baby. She seemed mad."

Yes, she would be, wouldn't she? "I distracted her from getting an answer earlier, and she dislikes being put off by someone as lowly as myself."

Sakura waited for him to say more, feeling bad that he'd say something so cruel about himself. Perhaps it was sarcasm? She'd always been bad at detecting it. "The answer is…?" she prodded cautiously, rubbing the towel across a cut on his arm.

"I will discuss it privately with Himiko," he answered sharply, yanking the towel from her hands. "I can wash myself, you know."

Sakura looked hurt, but quietly picked up her supplies and left, leaving Akabane to finish cleaning his own wounds. It was lonely work, but he was used to being self-reliant, and thus it felt more natural for him to treat himself.

Himiko was still waiting outside when he emerged like a wet butterfly from a cocoon. Jubei's clothes were so large on his slender frame that it looked as though maybe that were more than just a metaphorical analogy. "Well?" Himiko asked, trying to block his path with her small body. This was largely ineffective from a logistical standpoint. He noticed that she'd rather carefully balanced her weight, which would make it hard for him to knock her over and make it look casual.

"You don't even give me a moment to collect my scattered thoughts, do you?"

"You've put me off long enough. I'm not going to be distracted again."

He dodged around her, flopping down on the couch and sitting on the remote for the television in the process. That didn't feel very good. He dug the remote out from between his butt and the blue-grey pillows. "I'm not sure I have an answer for your question."

"Did Kagami lie to me? I won't be angry with _you,_ at least, if he did."

"I'm not sure that he lied because I'm not sure I believe the truth," he answered, settling back with a cat-like stretch. He ached all over like heck, he was starving, and the conversation Himiko was pushing him into didn't help his mood.

"Did he find evidence that you were involved in an illegitimate child? I know that people in our position don't discuss their families because that could lead to them being killed as an act of revenge, is that it?"

Well, he could answer her first question truthfully without giving her much information. "Evidence, yes. Conclusive evidence, no."

"Who's the mother?"

"I do not know how to answer that question. The situation surrounding it is nothing else if not implausible."

"Implausible? You mean like the myth that virgins can't get pregnant when they're deflowered?" Himiko asked, her voice rising with anger at how mysterious he was being. "Or- oh, that high school girl that follows you around like a lovesick puppy? Did you get her pregnant? Well, considering that, that would practically be statutory rape…"

"I did not RAPE ANYONE," he suddenly snapped, startling Himiko greatly. "I didn't know your opinion of me was so low that you'd actually think that I would violate a child." He removed himself from the couch as Himiko stumbled backwards, moving away from him. He towered over her, black hair draped in wet tangles about his face, eye bright with an insane light at the indignity of what she'd just suggested. If anyone… if anyone in the situation had been sexually violated, it was him, and she had the nerve to…

Himiko noticed his hands twitching. "Akabane, calm down! Calm down" she said, one hand out in defense while the other reached around her back to grip her poison perfumes. "I'm sorry, I was out of line-"

"You think you can say whatever you want if you apologize for it later?" he asked dangerously, eyes taking on that same crazed look he'd had in the infinite castle when Ginji had apparently gone nuts on him. "That's not the way this world works, Himiko-chan," he said, his voice mocking. "Himiko-chan."

All of the sudden, very cold water was thrown over his face and shoulders. Dripping and shivering, Himiko and Akabane looked up to see Sakura standing there, holding up the now empty glass of water shed' been sipping. "It always worked when our cats would fight…" she explained sheepishly.

Akabane looked down at his scared hands, still shaking, clenched, and trembling with rage. It wasn't his nature to act in anger, but…

"Forgive me," Himiko said. "I said some inexcusable things," she whispered, looking away. It didn't elude him that she was using the most humble form of speech that was appropriate for the situation, which was something he often personally did when apologizing. Her speech irritated him.

"You do not understand."

"I would if you'd stop distracting me and just tell me what Kagami meant!"

"Himiko-chan, if you are so insistent upon knowing something you should not, and putting your life on the line for it, then I will tell you something you will wish you had not heard for the rest of your days," he answered, taking the empty glass violently from Sakura and studying it. "I wonder if this will work for a listening device. I know it's good for hotel eavesdropping, but I'm not sure it's as good as a stethoscope…"

"I have one of those!" Sakura smiled. "Or rather, my brother does. It was a present from someone who misunderstood what kind of medicine it is that we do." She disappeared into her brother's room, throwing packed boxes around for awhile before returning with the device still in its box.

Akabane thanked her and took to opening the box, which proved to be difficult owing to the layers of ancient tape holding it shut. He didn't actually want to show Himiko deep down in his logical brain, but his emotional brain had taken control with the indignity of being accused of impregnating teenagers. He also realized there was a distinct chance he might go insane if he didn't have someone he could tell about his problem. "It is cold," he protested as Himiko took the earpiece and tried to stick the metal end under his robe. "And you are aiming that at the wrong organ," he noted, pushing it away from his chest.

After a few moments of pushing it around, he handed the earpiece back to Himiko, who looked it over in disgust for potential earwax debris. "What am I supposed to be listening to? Other than your intestines gurgling that is," she grunted.

"A very rapid, repetitive lub-dub sound. Listen carefully, it is hard to hear under the sound of my intestines 'gurgling' as you put it."

"Yes."

"That's not my… that's not my…" he hesitated, having trouble putting the word 'heartbeat' into the sentence.

"I can here it over here and over here the best," Himiko interrupted, moving the device across his middle.

He blinked. "Are you sure it sounds the loudest in two places?"

"Yeah. Over to the… to the left and the middle right, it is really clear. The sound kinda overlaps between them, it's harder to hear there," she said, pointing.

"I need to sit down," he said, flopping himself onto the couch. "Please, give me that. I want to hear." She willingly handed it over, watching as the amount of time he spent listening seemed to correlate with how far he'd sunk himself into the couch cushions. Without warning, he suddenly threw the stethoscope aside and curled up on the couch with his face buried in the seats.

"Hey, that's Sakura's! Don't throw that!" Himiko snapped, running to retrieve it.

"It's okay," Sakura said quickly. "We've never used it anyway." She put a hand gently down on Akabane's sharp shoulders, ready to yank it away if it looked like she might be in danger of losing her hand by doing so. "What's wrong?"

"It was a surgical wound," he responded, still not looking at them. He didn't want to face them for fear he might drop his emotionless exterior in front of them from the shock of it all. His voice was broken, however, hinting to Sakura and Himiko that something very dire had happened. Listening to him was like listening to a cell phone with bad reception. "They put a thing inside me! They put that thing inside me!"

By that time, both Sakura and Himiko had drawn their weapons, as they were afraid that Akabane had taken a quick leave of his senses, and both realizing full well exactly how dangerous someone with his powers and without a stable mind could be.

He raised his head and found both girls on the alert. "Lady Poison," he said, looking directly through her and into the softness of her soul. Why was he using that name now? He'd been calling her Himiko just a minute ago. "Poison me. Kill it. Get it out of me. It's unnatural. It's against God. It's against man himself."

Himiko tried to back up, but he'd reached out and gripped the spandex of her pant leg with clawed fingers. "Akabane, you're talking crazy," she said, frantically trying to break out of his grip.

"They put a baby inside me!"

Himiko tried to pull free, causing him to hold her tighter. "Men don't have babies!" she cried. "They don't have the right parts!" she hated to do it, but she used her corrosive scent to slice off the piece of her pant leg he was holding, causing him to lose balance and topple onto the carpet as she skittered away.

"Then tell me what you just heard," he answered from his position with his upper body on the floor and his lower body on the couch. "I can't kill it myself. You must have a potion that induces abortion," he insisted, pulling all of himself off of the couch and crawling towards her. Backing up, Himiko felt her heart racing. The thing crawling across the floor no longer resembled Akabane, but the creature from Ju-on. Not knowing what else to do, she stuck her fingers up in front of her face.

"GO AWAY!" she screamed. "I don't, and even if I did, and even if you weren't absolutely crazy, I wouldn't give it to you to murder an unborn baby!" She grabbed a flower vase off the desk and flung it at him.

He caught the vase, a dazed look in his eyes. Having to put the mental energy into capturing it seemed to have snapped him out of whatever trance he'd been in. He set the vase gently down and returned to the couch, eyes turned to the floor. "It's a parasite that someone planted inside me. Is it not my right to do what I will with parasites in my body?"

"You're… you're completely insane!"

"Maybe I am," he said in an almost dreamy way. His head was lost on thoughts of how he'd nearly lost control. Such behavior wasn't normal, even as far as normal for himself was concerned. "If I am, please explain that sound to me. You have to admit you heard it."

"You need help. Men can't have babies!"

"There's a way to settle this," Sakura interjected from the kitchen, scuffling out with a plastic bowl filled with what appeared to be chopped lettuce or cabbage inside it. "Here," she said, thrusting it into his hands. "Can you pee on this please?"

Hi stared at Sakura. Akabane stared at the limp leaves. "You did not even give me any dressing…"

"Madness!" Himiko cried, her small body shaking in rage. "I'm surrounded by madness!"

"It turns red in response to pregnancy hormones! It's a pregnancy test from antiquity."

"In ancient times, it was also believed that one could rid oneself of ill humors by spreading excrements on one's chest," Akabane replied to that, poking the cabbage with one gloved finger. "A cure that is old is not necessarily a cure that is good."

"This one works, trust me! It was handed down to my by my mother," Sakura argued.

"This is ridiculous," Himiko snorted.

"Agreed," Akabane nodded. "So ridiculous that I think it might be worth doing for the fun of it, and the colors Himiko-chan's face is taking on," he said, hand threateningly tugging lightly on the zipper of his pants.

Himiko put her hands up to her cheeks and felt that they were, indeed, flushed. "You... use the bathroom for that kind of thing!" she snapped, pointing.

"Himiko-chan is no fun," Akabane pouted, disappearing off in the direction of the aforementioned toilet.

Himiko waited, tapping her foot in a nervous manner. When Akabane did finally emerge from the bathroom, he presented the bowl in a ceremonious manner to Himiko. "The cabbage is red," he said firmly, setting it down on Himiko's lap. "Douzo."

"Don't give me something you peed on!" she snapped, moving it over onto the table. She looked down at it and declared, "This cabbage lies." She didn't realize until after she said it how stupid it sounded.

After a lot of arguing centered on whether or not the cabbage did lie, and a rather unfriendly trip to the convenience store, the three sat around the coffee table in angry silence. Or rather, Himiko and Sakura sat around the coffee table in angry silence. Sakura was mad at Himiko for calling her cabbage a liar, and Himiko was mad at Sakura for being so stubborn about the stupid cabbage. Akabane didn't care enough to bother with staying mad, so he was just kind of existing. It was something he was very good at. Existing, that is. It wasn't that he didn't care about anything; it was that he'd long ago learned how not to express his cares on his face.

On the table, Sakura arranged the tests that they'd picked up at the convenience stores in neat rows. Himiko's dark mood had grown even blacker because the tests were expensive. Perhaps one test alone would not have been too bad, but she'd insisted on purchasing three in case one came back positive. She absolutely refused to believe that a man could go through something as sacred to women as carrying a child. She absolutely refused to believe that _that man_ could be trusted with the life of a helpless being.

Sakura held up the tests. "All three of them… came back positive, Himiko."

If it were possible for Himiko's jaw to unhinge, it would have struck the thin gray carpeting. All Akabane could say, his voice dull, was "I believe you owe the cabbage an apology, Himiko-chan." He put his hands on the couch and pushed himself upward, standing slightly unevenly. "If you do not mind, I would like assistance in terminating this alien parasite."

Himiko glared at him, eyes filled with the flames she normally reserved only for thoughts of her brother's cruel death. Without warning she launched herself across the room, gripping him tightly around the waist, pulling his body uncomfortably up against her head. "Don't worry," she said, her voice frighteningly calm. "I'll protect you."

He shoved her roughly off. "Do not touch me," he ordered. "You have no right to say that to me."

She gripped his wrist with a force he didn't know she was capable of generating. "I'll adopt them."

"You? You're barely over being a child yourself. No, you are a child," he answered, trying to pull himself out of her grip. He would cut her if necessary, just lightly. As a general rule, he did not hurt other transporters without receiving some pleasure from it, and he knew he would get no pleasure from hurting Lady Poison.

Sakura suddenly broke in, carrying a box out from the kitchen. "Akabane-san, I almost forgot that Kagami-san gave us your pants."

"My, so he did," Akabane mused, taking advantage of Himiko being distracted by Sakura's sudden interjection to break free and stride away from her. He took the folded pants from Sakura. "Do you have a dressing room I could borrow?" he asked, holding them against his chest.

Sakura nodded and pointed to her bedroom. "Just shut the door behind you."

He disappeared into the bedroom and reappeared a few moments later, dressed in his own clothes. He noticed the half-rotted, wet scent of Infinite Castle clinging to them. He wrinkled up his nose in disgust. He hated having to do laundry twice in one week. Wait, he wouldn't have to. He'd forgotten that he'd lost nearly everything in the explosion. It hadn't burned up, but there was no way he could return back to that place now. It would be crawling with police.

"Where are you going?" Himiko asked. "It's late and you have no where to go," she said, almost as if reading his thoughts.

"I have a job tonight," he answered, pulling on his shoes and tying the laces. It was only then that he noticed his hands shaking so badly that the task became difficult. He knew that working after losing so much blood was a bad idea, but if he did not go to work he thought he might go insane. He might go insane even if he did go to work. Work was merely a convenient distraction from the violation and the humiliation he was feeling. The violation was a natural feeling, stemming from the fact that someone had placed an unwanted creature inside his body. The humiliation came from a combination of the concept of being a pregnant man, and from the way Himiko was treating him. She was acting like he was in the bad guy in the situation, when his memory had been erased and his body had been forcibly harmed.

"You can't go on a delivery while expecting," Himiko argued, only further validating his point in his mind. He stopped fixing his shoe and stood up to his full height, letting himself tower over Himiko.

"If I were to say that to a woman, you would call me a sexist pig. It is an easy job." He smoothed out a wrinkle in his coat so that he wouldn't have to look at her face. Her righteous indignation made him sick. "You will not be as foolish as to tell anyone about this, will you, dear girls?" he asked, voice as cold as a corpse. "I would hate to have to silence you."

Himiko took a step to put herself between him and Sakura, not liking the threatening tone that had entered his voice. "Don't worry about it. Your own body will give you away before I possibly could."

"Do not count on it, Himiko-chan. I have no intention of keeping… this thing. Even if the resultant of that is that you consider me to be less than a beast for the rest of our days."

He gripped the door handle, waiting for Himiko to say some kind of witty retort. When no sounds came from the girl, he assumed that the last word had been given as his, and let himself out.

The job was a medical transportation, which he'd actually been avoiding taking since the Bombay Blood incident. He'd rubbed the body traders the wrong way on that one. It was their own fault, but they failed to see it. They'd interfered with his fun.

As he'd predicted, his night's work was both easy and boring. No one even challenged him. For a moment, he considered walking directly in front of a police car and opening the package to wave a severed human heart at them if only to start an interesting confrontation. In the end he decided his client might be irritated if he dirtied up the delivery. Thus, he did not.

It was after the delivery was complete that his life became more interesting. As he was pulling out his wallet in order to buy a juice for dinner, he found a small white business card. He picked up the card and studied it. He didn't remember having picked up this card. The name had been crossed out. The words "call me" and a number were scrawled on the back.

He really didn't know why, but he called the number from a bus shelter as he finished his drink. He recognized the voice on the other end almost immediately. "What did you wish me to call you about, Kyoji-kun?" he asked, voice caught between sarcasm and mocking. "I am afraid I don't have time in my schedule to be a prisoner."

"I actually called you because Infinite Castle wants to cut a deal with you. Give us the child, and we'll give you something you truly want- power."

"What kind of power do we speak?"

"The power of Babylon City. A full residency, if you want it. The power to defeat Midou Ban, if you do not want that. Any power your mind could wish, we can grant you. All you have to give us is that which was unwanted to you in the first place. How does that sound?"

"Too good to be true, Kagami Kyoji-kun. There must be a catch you're not telling me about."

"No catch, beyond having to carry the humiliation as well as the child. We want it enough to trade you this great power for it. What we can give you is limited only by your imagination."

He paused, and then asked, "the seed of destruction?"

"So, you know about that? Really, it is just a fancy name for nothing. The only thing it stands to destroy is women's monopoly over reproduction."

"Somehow I don't believe you," Akabane smirked. "You wish me to become Rosemary, carrying the great power of the devil's child to fruition for your own gains."

Kagami's voice indicated that he was smiling as he spoke to the phone. "Once again, your knowledge of Western culture is impeccable. No less than I would expect of one from your class. I've been authorized to tell you that you have 24 hours to make a decision to accept or reject."

"If I reject, I will become an enemy of Babylon City and all its spies, correct?"

"Correct."

"I have some terms of my own, since it seems that in one form or another it is in my best interests to take your offer. I don't want my choices interfered with, or my life. You will leave me alone until it is time for you collect your goods. I want the power to defeat the fallen angel." He paused, then added, "Perhaps most importantly, I do not want you to tell anyone that we have this agreement."

"Your last request surprises me. I will let you know shortly if my superiors accept your conditions," Kagami answered. The line clicked, indicating that he'd hung up without so much as a good-bye. How rude, Akabane thought to himself. Didn't they teach manners anymore in Babylon City?

A cold wind blew up the sleeves of his jacket, causing him to shiver. He walked the neon-lit night streets of Tokyo alone. Without any ambition he wandered, wondering what he'd gotten himself into. He still had to find a way to talk to the police about his apartment. Hopefully he could do so without anyone connecting his citizen persona to his transporter persona. Leaving the hat at home was usually good enough to fool the police. His hat was like Clark Kent's glasses, only far more effective because it concealed all of his face but his thin lips. He had no desire to bear a child in prison, where the sheer idea of a male pregnancy would make him the wonder and the disgust of the modern world. He did not wish to spend the rest of his days naked in a medical research center.

Was it a child, or was it children? He had heard what could be two pulses, but then, he was not trained in obstetrics. It could have just been an echo. Kagami had said "child," but perhaps Kagami was ignorant or simply using bad speech. He was so lost in thought that he failed to see a pothole and tripped in it. As he stumbled he nearly sprained his ankle, brining his attention back to the world at the moment. He shivered as another cold wind blew against his body. The fact that he was homeless was far more important at the moment than figuring out how many theoretical bargaining chips grew within him.

Against his will, he found his body slowly dragging back towards Sakura's apartment. At the very least, he had to go there to get his laptop back from her. He arrived at her door as the sun was rising. He apologetically lifted the phone to call her and ask to be buzzed into the residence building. He knew he'd hate being awakened at that time in the morning, but it was unavoidable.

Sakura let him in, greeting him in her nightgown with her hair tightly braided. She ushered him inside. He frowned when he noticed Himiko sleeping on the couch. "Why is she still here?" he whispered, not wanting to wake her.

"She wanted me to wake her when you arrived. She wanted to talk to you. I don't have the heart to wake her, though. She looks so peaceful sleeping like that."

"I'm sure she will understand," he answered, laptop in one hand and the other hand on the door. He hesitated, noticing how warm it was inside as opposed to outside. "You know, this is a very nice apartment. If I had a nice apartment like this, perhaps I would not have to freeze tonight," he said cautiously and slowly, hoping Sakura would take the bait and save him the trouble of finding new lodgings. "I shouldn't expose unborn babies to the elements like this, but what can I do? Oh well."

"Wait!" she cried as he started to shut the door. "I can let you use my brother's room while he's off finding his 'comedic self' in Hokkaido. I can let you stay if you won't get rid of them. They mean so much to Himiko…" She glanced over at the sleeping girl, curled up in a ball on the couch. "I owe her my life. I want to be able to repay the favor some day."

"How… sentimental," Akabane mused. He raised his head just enough to let his eyes peak out from underneath his hat. "I suppose I could stay for awhile and think about it."

Sakura nodded and gestured. "His way, please. It's this room," she whispered.

To Be Continued…

(Yeah, I know, not particularly a cliffhanger but my hands hurt and this is as good of place as any to take a break.)


	6. Living in Dreamtime

Akabane opened his eyes, confused. His vision was blurry. A moment later it cleared. He found himself in an expansive brick room. This isn't Sakura-chan's apartment, he thought. He wasn't quite sure where it was. He picked himself up from the cobbled ground, dusting layers of dirt off his coat. He took a few steps and felt pebbles against his feet. For some reason, he was wearing all of his clothes except his shoes and socks. This confused him greatly.

The room was lit entirely in shades of blue. He wandered through it aimlessly, looking all around. High windows were decorated with broken pieces of stained glass, letting him see the waxing moon beyond. He walked over broken glass from the windows, but for some reason the glass did not cut his feet.

He paused in front of a full rose bush, growing in the single beam of moonlight. "What are you doing here?" he asked it, not expecting any answer. He knelt down to bring the bush's leaves to his eye level. The few buds the plant had left were rotted and wilting, eaten away as if by disease. "Poor thing," he said, touching a leaf with his gloved hands.

His touch brought about a reaction from the rose. The plant's interior began moving, twisting like a pool of mating serpents. The blackness of the vines twisting against one another fascinated Akabane. He tilted his head and leaned back to get a better look at their movement.

As he moved, a vine shot out from within the bush and tangled around his neck. He let out a sound of surprise, barely a cry at all. Thorns dug into his skin. He tried to cut the vines, but another one clasped around his wrist. He attempted to bring scalpels out of his other hand, but the vines had found that hand as well and twisted around it.

He could feel his collar wet with his own blood as the remaining vines curled around his waist and legs, dragging him further into the bush. The thorns cut his face and tore at his eyes. He fought against the bush, but was no match for its strength. It continued to draw him in until his body was consumed and tangled in the whole of the brush. An ever- widening pool of blood grew beneath his body, flowing down to nourish the roots of the plant.

The brush cleared for a moment, and through the thorns and leaves he saw someone standing in the moonlight. He felt his mouth opening, a scream forming within.

"Go ahead and cry for help. Who are you kidding? No one will save a monster like you."

A moment of silence existed between Akabane and the speaker, during which he continued to fight as the words pierced into his mind more sharply than the thorns. He fell silently back into the bush, the will to fight drained from his body. He couldn't find the strength to scream anymore; his voice seemed to have abandoned him. He didn't even make a tiny cry as the branches moved inward, ripping through bone and muscle, consuming him piecemeal.

Then, without warning… he woke up. After a few uncertain moments of heaving, he failed to throw up. He wasn't certain if this was good or not, as he still felt like he had to. He would have thought that waking up, eyes wide, sitting bolt upright in bed covered in cold sweat was something that only happened to movie characters. He would never have admitted it, as it would have shamed his stubborn pride, but the only response he could think of was to pull the sheets over his head and huddle in a ball for the duration of the night.

---

Around ten that same morning, Himiko awoke to find Akabane's laptop gone from the coffee table. Inwardly she moaned. Sakura hadn't awakened her, and she had no idea where Akabane might have gone into hiding now that his apartment was no longer an option.

She did not expect to turn around and find him standing behind her, holding what appeared to be a glass of juice in one hand and a piece of apple in the other. She jumped a bit. His apparition-like way of appearing when he wanted to was a bit unnerving.

"Good morning, Lady Poison. Was the futon to your liking?" If the dream last night had left any permanent mental scar, he wasn't showing it to the outside world.

"What are you doing here?" Himiko asked, surprise making her voice come out at a higher pitch than normal. "And why are you still wearing Jubei's clothes?"

He looked down at the white T-shirt and pants that he had had to safety pin together, owing to the fact that they were much too large for his slender frame. "These are Sakura-chan's brother's. I don't have any clean clothes that weren't in my apartment. I thought I might try to deal with the police today. It's unlikely that they would connect someone this disheveled to my other identity." That, and he just wanted to get out of the apartment. He needed fresh air.

"A good thought," she answered, turning her attention to his middle. "Are they… dead?" she asked, trying not to sound too emotional.

"Sakura-chan is trading their lives for the rent." He grinned at her. "I believe I got the better part of the deal."

At first, Himiko could not even speak, shocked at the callous nature of his answer. "You… you… you, SIR, are a bastard!" she screamed at last, and only Sakura's intervention prevented Himiko from unwisely going at Akabane with fists swinging. The cloth-wielder grabbed Himiko by the shoulders and pushed her toward the kitchen, murmuring something about fixing an early lunch. Chuckling softly, Akabane sat down on the couch. He hoped whatever Sakura made wouldn't upset his stomach.

After a pleasant meal in taste if not atmosphere , Akabane went out and Himiko went on the computer. She did calculations as Sakura curiously watched over her shoulder. "If we assume that the heart just started beating on the day we heard it, their due date should be sometime in March," Himiko mused to herself as she leaned back in the computer chair. "That is, assuming they will grow at the same rate as a naturally conceived infant."

"The date itself is a bit arbitrary, since I don't see any way for them to get out of his body other than by surgery," Sakura added as she nodded in agreement with Himiko's claims.

(While the girls continued their conversation, the officer checking a pile of papers looked up coldly at the strangely dressed man squirming in the seat across from him. Akabane was swinging his legs, kicking the chair and making an annoying noise each time his heels hit metal. "That sure was a nice apartment… for someone who lives on a military disability check, that is.."

"I don't really have any other expenses," Akabane said, pushing away the cup of brown mush they tried to pass off as coffee. He felt vaguely nervous, because there was always the threat he could be identified. No matter how careful he was not to leave evidence on his victims, he felt the possibility hanging over his head."

"Military disability, huh? You're not missing any limbs. Is it that post-traumatic stress thing everyone seems to be getting lately?" He caught Akabane looking sharply up at him. "You're right, those aren't PC things for me to say," he said, wriggling his fingers in a gesture of quotation. "Let's get back to why someone would plant a bomb in your apartment. Made any gang enemies lately?"

"Bombs aren't really the Yakuza's style…." Akabane mused. "Are they?" At least, it didn't seem like the style of the few Yakuza he'd taken jobs with.

"You never know… we have a special interest in your case, seeing as how it could be taken as a terrorist act. Terrorists don't really go over well in this day and age."

"I understand your reasons, but I can't offer you any information. I'd rather my apartment not have blown up, and you can believe me on that."

After another half hour of going in circles that made Akabane's head hurt, he was finally released. Unfortunately, he was released with the caution the police could call him back for more questions at any time they pleased. Even though they hadn't directly said it, their attitude told him that he was prime suspect number one in their minds. He would lay low on his Dr. Jackal activities for the next few days, and tell Himiko it was out of concern for her concerns. That would make her happy.

He had managed, via careful question answering, to learn that his bathroom was largely a pile of broken tile. This relieved him, because it meant they hadn't found the halo of blood he'd left. He'd hate for them to have a sample of his blood on record.

As he walked home, he decided to be polite and pick up groceries. He helped himself to a large amount of the mochi he'd bought intending to share as he walked home. He knew he shouldn't. He knew there was a possibility his nausea would return and he'd see the mochi again. But damn it, it just tasted so _good!_

"I brought food," he announced when he arrived back at Sakura's apartment.

"Thank you. There's a key for you on the desk. I explained the situation to my landlady and she was very nice about letting me add you to the lease."

He picked up the key and noticed yet another one lying next to it, along with a pile of boxes in the living room. "Whose boxes are those?"

"Mine," Himiko answered, walking out of the main bedroom. "I'm standing by my declaration that I'm not letting a sweet, innocent girl like Sakura live alone with someone like you. So, I'm moving in. Sakura and I will share a room. You can have Jubei's room. Just put his stuff in the closet and don't get too comfortable in your decorating."

"All this fuss for little me? I'm flattered," he answered, eating the very last of the mochi. If she was going to be like that, then she shouldn't have any. "Mmm, mochi," he mumbled.

Himiko studied him inquisitively, noticing the empty sweets package in the bag. "A little bit early for pregnancy cravings, isn't it?"

"I liked mochi before this," he answered. He admitted that he'd never eaten an entire tray in one sitting before, though. Well, wait. There had been that one time. He'd had a really rough day at work.

The nausea that he'd feared the mochi would awaken didn't return until two days later, when a stir-fry Sakura was preparing sent him flying into the bathroom. He had hoped he was over the vomiting. He hadn't thrown up since Babylon City, after all. "I thought it was supposed to be morning sickness," he protested as Himiko came in to check on him. "It is evening now."

"That's just a fanciful name for it, from what I understand. It's really comes-any-time-it-feels-like-it-too-bad-for-you sickness, from what I've heard," Himiko responded. "I hear it generally goes away at the end of the first trimester."

He put his head down on the toilet seat. "Wonderful, two more months of vomiting hell. I can hardly wait."

"Yes, then you get to swell out like you have a watermelon in your shirt," Himiko replied.

Right then, Sakura arrived on the scene. "I'll loan you my books on women's alternative medicines," she said, too cheerily for the sick Akabane's taste.

"Thanks," he grunted. He was starting to wonder if the trouble was worth the power he was going to receive from Babylon City. They had better be some pretty amazing powers for the amount of suffering he was being forced to endure. Not only that, but his attempts to hunt down Rune Biotechnology had been largely fruitless, leaving him with a handful of dead ends and a sense of lack of revenge or closure. "I am going to return to the bedroom."

He made good on that statement and promptly collapsed into a pile of sheets. He rolled around in them until he literally resembled the phrase "a bug in a rug" He'd been rolling himself up in his sheets ever since the first nightmare that he'd suffered, as if the piles of blankets could keep out bad thoughts.

So far, it had worked. Unfortunately for Akabane, tonight was to be the night that his defense mechanism would fail. He dreamed of bright lights shining down in his eyes, nearly blinding him. He tried to move his arms, but found them restrained. Through a haze in his mind, he saw someone dressed in white approaching. The man was holding a bundle as though it were a child. He leaned over and presented Akabane with a jar filled with what appeared to be a jumble of metal and soft bodily tissues.

The most hideous image in the dream was a severed head wrapped in wires, suspended in the air before Akabane. It seemed to be grinning down upon his body, splayed before the dead eyes. They gleamed almost as if they hungered for his flesh from beyond the grave.

He woke up from that dream badly nauseated but unable to vomit yet again. Not knowing what else to do, he crawled into the bathroom and sat on the floor of the shower, letting hot water wash over his back. Despite the heat he shivered. He felt weaker than if he hadn't bothered to sleep at all, a sensation he hated with all his soul. He remained on the floor of the shower until the water turned so bitterly cold that he could not stand it anymore.

It was only when drying off that he realized he'd rubbed his skin raw, blood oozing through cracks in his epidermis. It hurt to touch even the gentlest of towel by the time he'd finished, and his clothes were sheer torture against the irritated skin. He blamed it on dry skin when the girls saw him and gasped, surprised at how rough and red he looked. Sakura wasn't easily convinced, however, and insisted on wrapping as much of his body in gauze as she could, taking special care to cover the especially nasty cracks.

"I look like a mummy," he commented dully, staring as Sakura finished taping gauze over his hands.

"Instead of a mommy?" she joked, trying to lighten the mood. Akabane, however, was not amused. So not amused was he, in fact, that he snatched his dinner away from Himiko and retreated post-haste into Jubei's room to eat it by himself.

As Sakura and Himiko ate without Akabane's presence, the young cloth-user spoke up. "I'm worried that his mental state might be deteriorating," she whispered to Himiko, looking terrified that Akabane might hear her talking about him. "He rubbed his outer layers of skin off in the shower."

"I know. He said it was dry skin. I take it you suspect otherwise?" Himiko asked, setting down her chopsticks.

"Mm," Sakura nodded. "I can tell the difference between skin that is dry and skin that has been abused."

Himiko looked down at her plate, suddenly not hungry. "Victims… of sexual assault often injure their skin trying to clean themselves," she sighed. "Gods, I've been stupid. Why didn't I see it before? I'm sure he feels that he was... molested."

"I understand," Sakura answered, not wanting to push Himiko to say words that were difficult for her. "What do we do about him?"

Himiko frowned. "We need to get him out of the apartment, brighten him up. All he's done lately is mope around and throw up." She looked down at the newspaper she'd been using as a placemat. "That's it!"

Akabane yawned and rubbed his eyes. "I'm tired, Himiko-chan. Why did you drag me out of bed when I was napping so peacefully?"

"Sakura and I noticed that you were feeling a bit down, so we thought it would be good to take you out to do something." Himiko pointed up at the theater marquee. "See? It's a midnight horror movie film fest!"

He squinted at the sign, then at Himiko. "Why would you assume that I like horror movies?"

"Well, you seem to like killing and bloody death, so we thought…"

"And I suppose you spend your free time buying perfumes," he snapped. Noticing her face falling, he sighed and added, "Since you've gone through all the work of dragging me out, I suppose that I can accept your goodwill gesture."

"Thanks. I think," Himiko commented, a drop of sweat clinging to her forehead.

Sakura, to Himiko's surprise, tolerated horror movies very well. She barely blinked when a severed head went flying, spine trailing behind like a grotesque kite tail. She didn't eat popcorn through the vivisection scene like Akabane did, which greatly encouraged Himiko's faith in Sakura's mental stability.

The first movie was a relatively simple slasher flick, of the kind popular in America. It boasted little more than grotesque splashes of colorful special effects, attempting to outdo one another in sheer volume of revulsion inflicted upon the audience.

If only Himiko had paid closer attention to the night's billing, perhaps disaster could have been averted. The second film was a Japanese remake of Rosemary's baby, which became horribly obvious to both Himiko and Sakura only after it was too late. By too late, of course, meant by the time that a badly disturbed Akabane had fled the theater, hands tightly over his mouth, to find a bathroom.

The girls chased after him and waited patiently for him to wobble out of the men's room, looking faint. "Did you throw up again?" Sakura asked, concern in her voice.

He shook his head, but there was a smell clinging to his clothes that suggested that he was lying. Dark circles had appeared under his eyes, perhaps a side effect of the way his skin was off-color. He looked as though all the soft tissues had sunk into the crevices of his skull. "I felt sick when those men… those devil worshippers… did that… to that… unwilling…girl," he finished. The only word he had sounded uncertain about saying was girl. He shook his head violently, trying to clear his mind. "It is not that I was unfamiliar with the movie. I have even referred to myself as Rosemary. Seeing it up on the screen, seeing them do that… it…it made me…"

"It's okay, you don't have to talk about it," Himiko said. "Let's just go home." The three walked home together. Himiko has suggested a taxi, but Akabane wanted the air. A few blocks from the theater, Himiko spoke up again. "I'm sorry. That was very insensitive of me, making you watch that movie. I should have looked into what was showing."

"You should have asked me what I wanted to see. I would have liked to go to a comedy," he answered, sounding distant. Sakura unlocked the door to the apartment. She couldn't help but notice that Himiko was looking away from Akabane, anger set on her face. In Himiko's mind, she'd apologized as nicely to Akabane as she could. He didn't have to be such an ass about it! What more could he possibly want other than a sincere apology? An illuminated manuscript about how apologetic she felt, perhaps?

"I want to take a shower," Akabane commented as soon as he'd wriggled out of his coat.

"You just took one earlier," Himiko argued. "Your skin is too raw." She gripped the sleeve of his shirt, trying to impede his movement. "I don't want you to hurt yourself again," she slipped.

He yanked his arm away from her. "What do you mean by_ again?"_ he asked,"I'm very tired and I just want to shower before I sleep."

"You'll rub your skin until it bleeds again," Himiko argued, physically blocking the way to the bathroom. She was ignoring the fact that he was large and strong enough to easily remove her from his path should he choose to.

"I… am not in the mood to fight," he answered, utterly surprising Himiko. She'd been ready to have to put up a struggle with him. "I'll just go to bed."She let him go, tired herself and still suffering a spot of shock. She'd seen him give up on fights before, but she hadn't expected him to drop it that time.

Kneeling on top of the flat mattress, Akabane glanced up into what he could see of the night sky over the lights of Tokyo. "Am I carrying the devil's babies?" he asked the empty air.

8


	7. Fight!

A/N: I'm sorry it is taking me so long to update. I've had a lot of personal trauma lately, and I don't feel like dealing with Akabane's trauma when I'm trying to sort out my own. Thanks.

-6-

Akabane lay very quietly on a cold, plastic table while one of the doctor-drones worked on adjusting a series of wires coiled about a frightening looking machine. Himiko and Kagami stood leaning against the far wall of the room, Kagami winking at Himiko and Himiko turning up her nose and pretending she didn't see it. Kagami tried scooting closer to Himiko, only to have her scoot closer towards the door.

"Does he _have_ to be here?" Himiko asked in irritation, finally leaving the wall and slinking across the room to where the doctor-drone was adjusting equipment.

"I'm Babylon City's representative," Kagami insisted, picking himself up from the floor where he'd fallen when his attempt to put an arm around Himiko's shoulders had failed. "They have a stake in this, you know."

Akabane gave him a pointed look, as Kagami had promised not to reveal his bargain. He knew Himiko would neither understand nor approve, and he'd have to hear about it for the next several months. He didn't love the little alien parasites taking freeloading advantage of his body. He did, however, love the idea of having enough power to stand victoriously over Midou Ban's fallen body.

He slashed out at the doctor-drone's hand when it attempted to unbutton his pants. "The machine can't read through your clothes," Kagami stated as the doctor-drone continued to try unsuccessfully to undress Akabane.

"I will be the only one touching my buttons," he snapped. True to his word, he undid as many buttons as he felt were necessary on his shirt, and only opened his pants the absolute minimum he desired to. The doctor-drone gave a frustrated look at Kagami, who just waved it off.

"Let him be stubborn if he wants," he shrugged.

The doctor-drone finally managed to adjust the machine over Akabane's still rather-flat middle. "This should give us a good image of what's going on inside, if we can scan past the womb's defenses," the doctor-drone informed Akabane. Akabane yawned.

The doctor-drone turned on the machine and adjusted the feed until two inhuman little blobs became apparent, chords leading out of their middles into the side of the womb. "There you go," the drone informed Kagami and Himiko, who battled one another for best position to look on the screen. "They don't look like much yet, do they?"

Himiko made a bit of a face, which Akabane noticed. "Not cute and wrinkly little bundles of joy are they?" he asked brightly, causing Himiko to look over her shoulder and make a very childish face at him.

"Judging from the shape of the head and the development of the features, I would place them between seven and eight weeks old. They should start looking more like little people within a week," the drone explained, sounding rather proud of itself.

"How… did you get such a clear picture?" Himiko asked, sounding a bit confused.

"After studying the womb with a sensitive ultrasound, we discovered that one of the knobs sticking out of it was a camera attachment. We dug a wire into his skin until we could meet up and read the feed coming from it."

Akabane sat up suddenly and violently, causing the camera feed to roll. "WHAT?" he asked, raising his way in a voice Himiko could say she'd never heard him do before.

"Lie back down, Akabane, you're going to jar the machines…"

"No," he said angrily, sitting all the way up despite Kagami and Himiko's attempts to get him to lie back down. "This _thing_ has a _camera feed_ built into it? That means whoever did this to me intended to be able to monitor it." He dug one angry fist into his middle. "I want it out of me!"

"Calm down, calm down!" Kagami stressed, knowing his superiors would not be happy if they didn't get the babies they were so badly interested in.

Himiko joined Kagami in attempting to calm Akabane back down and keep him on the table, as he was fighting to stand up despite the fact that the camera's wire was sticking out of a hole in his skin. "If… if it makes you feel any better, it's a very well made endoscope," the doctor-drone stammered, standing defensively in front of his equipment.

"I want it out of me!" he demanded again. "I am going to find the person who did this to me, and there is not going to be enough left of them to bury in a Chinese take-out carton," he fumed, continuing to struggle against Kagami, who held him down only via the sheer virtue of inhuman strength bestowed by Infinite Castle.

"Look," Himiko said desperately, trying to draw Akabane's attention away from how angry he was at the moment. "See? The one on the left is moving around."

They all paused and turned their attentions to the screen. Kagami frowned and narrowed his eyes, squinting at it. "I guess if you call attempting to wiggle around movement, then yes."

She gave him a nasty you-are-not-helping look, but it seemed to be enough to break Akabane's train of thought long enough for him to sink back onto the bed. His face was absolutely red, as he was humiliated by his behavior. Flying off the handle like that wasn't characteristic of him, but then, he hadn't exactly had full control of his emotions since the whole ordeal had begun. He hated feeling out of control almost as much as he hated feeling weak. He hated how his normal, aloof nature seemed to be slipping away from him and leaving a hysterical, flighty shell in its place. He didn't feel like himself anymore.

Of course, it didn't help anything that his feelings of depression over not feeling himself, coupled with a hormone surge, made him start to wibble. "Oh no," Himiko said.

"What's wrong?" Kagami asked, confused.

"He's going to cry," Himiko answered, looking around. "Do you have any tissues? Things get a little… wet when he's upset," she informed Kagami.

Akabane, meanwhile, was feeling even more humiliated by the fact that he couldn't keep the tears from forming in his eyes, which made him want to cry anymore. Which, in turn, made for a vicious cycle that would eventually end in him crying and feeling absolutely miserable and embarrassed about it. He hadn't cried when Ginji had ripped all 108 blades out of his body at once. He hadn't cried when he'd had his back slit wide open by a long sword. He hadn't even cried when Ban had shattered his sword and left him in a pile of rubbish. Why should he cry at the drop of a hat simply because that thing inside him was forcing him to?

Right then, Emishi happened to look in. "Sakura-chan sent me to tell you that something came up and she's going to be a bit late to the appointment."

"Emishi! What perfect timing!" Himiko cried, grabbing him by the wrist and dragging him into the room, where Akabane sat rubbing his eyes with his fists, trying to keep the tears in. "Cheer Akabane up!"

It was too bad that Emishi always wore those funny glasses of his, because Himiko would have loved to see the expression on his face when she threw him in front of a crying Dr. Jackal with instructions to cheer him up. Emishi looked thoughtful for a moment, then leaned in close to Akabane and started conspiritally whispering in Akabane's ear.

Akabane looked up at Emishi, his face blank as if he hadn't understood a word that was said, and then started crying harder than he had been before. "I think he made things worse," Kagami said, frowning at Himiko.

"Oh, forget it," Himiko said. "Knowing his mood swings, he'll stop on his own in a few minutes."

"Or maybe if we give him something to eat!" Emishi suggested brightly, producing a box of Pocky from his pocket. "Have some candy," he suggested. Akabane took a few pieces and started nibbling on them in a mouse-like fashion. Within a few moments, his breathing was back to normal and he had stopped crying, even if his eyes were still puffy and red.

"Where'd you learn that trick?" Himiko whispered, not wanting Akabane to hear.

"Works on little kids all the time," Emishi whispered back.

Akabane, meanwhile, was busily eating the entire box of Pocky by himself. No one moved to stop him. They'd learned that attempting to take food away from an Akabane with cravings usually lead to one being swiped at with sharp objects. At least now that he was being fed, he looked happier.

"Are you going to let us finish the exam now?" Kagami asked, trying not to sound exasperated when Akabane had finished the box of Pocky and was searching the bottom for crumbs.

"Give me another box?" he asked.

They finally got him to lie down for the duration of the rest of the exam, during which the doctor-drone pronounced that there were, indeed, two very healthy little seven week-old embryos just beginning to move about. He also detected a little bud-like scar on the flesh inner wall of the artificial womb, which he told Himiko in private he believed was likely from another embryo that had failed to develop.

Sakura arrived only as Akabane was buttoning up his shirt and pants, carrying the second box of snacks Akabane had been promised. The doctor-drone looked over the data readouts from the exam. "I say that he looks healthy enough to continue with his normal activities, in moderation of course."

Akabane's face brightened and Himiko slapped her forehead with one hand. "See, Himiko-chan? The doctor even says that I can go on that job tonight."

"What about the police watchers?"

"They are easy enough to slip past," he said, waving off her concerns with one pale hand. "I have not had any real pleasure in weeks, Himiko-chan. Please do not enjoy me the benefit of living my life."

"You've got to consider your physical state before you think about how much fun you're having! Someone who breaks down and cries because they can't have the flavor of shaved ice they want is not someone who should be going out on a transporting job!"

"Hormones, Himiko-chan." He flicked a scalpel at her in annoyance. "I am still more than mentally and physically capable of taking on my assigned routes."

She threw up her hands in resignation. "You win! But I'm not binding your wounds when you come home in tears."

"I would not expect you to, Himiko-chan. I have always bound my wounds by myself," he argued back, tugging at the lapels of his coat. "I will see you when I return."

Thus, for a period of about two weeks, Akabane returned back to his usual activities. The nausea subsided to the point where it was annoying rather than crippling. Getting to fight again lifted his spirits up to nearly pre-pregnancy levels. Perhaps, things were finally starting to move in his direction again.

He came home one night with a sprained wrist but in an amazingly good mood. "Ban-kun fought me particularly well tonight," he explained as he wrapped the sprain in gauze. "I was a bit worried that my condition might affect my abilities, but I can still handle the infamous Midou Ban, then-"

"Then you're an idiot!" Himiko cried, suddenly rising up and slapping her fist on the kitchen counter. She brought it down hard enough to shake the glass. "What if he'd hit your belly instead of your wrist? You could have gotten them severely hurt!"

"I am so glad you care about my personal safety, Himiko-chan," he answered, hanging his coat on the rack. His eyes were cold, the humor he'd come home with draining out of them. "They have the best defensive womb known to mankind. After all, if I can not hurt them, who possibly could?" He looked down at his wrist. "It was not the snake bite. My hand got tangled in a strap when they went for the case I was carrying and they pulled it in an odd direction. Fortunately, I was holding it with my weaker hand. With the liveliness Ban was displaying, breaking my strong wrist could have caused real problems for me.

He lifted his gaze up from his wrist to discover that Himiko had moved away from him. She was standing at the door, shoulders shaking slightly with rage. How could he be so casual about his responsibilities? It wasn't about him, it was about those defenseless babies. She'd seen them kicking and wiggling on the last images they'd taken, and her heart had practically fallen from her chest with how much she'd wanted to reach out to them. Akabane, for his part, had coldly informed her that even though they could see them moving, he could not yet feel them. Thus, he didn't qualify their motions as actually existing. "Where are you going, Himiko-chan?" he asked, standing barefoot in the doorway behind her.

"Out for a walk!" She answered shortly and sharply, slamming the door behind herself. Of course, she wasn't just going for a walk… she was going to the Honky Tonk to seek out Ban and Ginji.

She found only Ginji there, as Ban was apparently out trying to find a new place to hide their car from the diligent city parking police. Knowing that the innocent of a girl was Ginji's weakness, she slid up to the bar and coyly traced a finger on his hand. "Ginji-kun, could I ask you to do me ooooone little favor, please?" she asked, her voice so honey sweet it made her want to vomit. How some girls could always be like that was beyond her. They must really like their sugar daddies to swallow down that kind of feminine tripe.

It seemed to work. His cheeks blushed a deep pink, as his eyes sparkled with white diamonds. In the blink of an eye, her reverted to a flapping tare. "Anything for you, Himiko-chaaaaaan!" he declared.

"Good. Can you please not take any more jobs involving Akabane-san?"

Ginji looked very confused, a sweat drop as big as his chubby fists appearing on his head. "Eh? I'd like to see as little of Akabane-san as possible, but why? Himiko-chan?"

Himiko, in her wisdom, had anticipated that question. "He's very sick, even if he won't admit it to himself. I don't want to see him get hurt because he's too stubborn to take care of himself." Of course, the truthful statement was that she didn't want to see the precious little ones get hurt because Akabane was too stubborn to take care of himself. "There's… something very special that I want to protect."

"I heard that you'd moved in with him, but I didn't believe it until now," a deeper voice interjected.

Himiko spun around on her bar stool. "Ban!" She cried, noticing that his facial expression was one of pure rage. "How long have you been standing there?"

He didn't answer her. "I guess you don't mind shaking up with _murderers_ anymore," he mocked, throwing her words from those long years ago back in her face.

"That's unfair, Ban-chan!" Ginji cried, noticing the hurt that spread over Himiko's young face.

"You stay out of this!" Ban snarled, causing Ginji to shrivel up and deflate in fear.

"You don't understand the situation," Himiko screamed back at Ban, impassioned by how callously he'd thrown her pain at her.

"I might id you explain yourself," he replied coolly, eyes dark with rage.

"I can't. Because…" Because I promised I wouldn't. "I don't have to explain myself to you about anything, ever! You're not my keeper! In fact, you never explained why you killed the man who was my keeper!" she screamed in his face. "Have faith in _my_ judgment for once instead of toting your holier-than-thou opinion. Especially when you don't know any of the own facts. This is my personal battle, let me fight it."

"I can tell which one of us you've judged to be more important to you." With that, Ban turned heel and stormed out of the restaurant. He slammed the door behind him so forcefully that the glass panes cracked in two places.

"Master's going to make us pay for that!" Ginji whimpered as he slid further down on his seat.

Outside, Ban stomped down the street. A black cloud of doom, threatening lightning, hung over his head. Animals fled from his approach, so great was his anger. Akabane and Himiko, Himiko and Akabane. Himiko, the little girl he'd die to protect, squirming beneath that half-human monstrosity. It was like finding out your sister was engaged to Freddy Krueger, except that this was real life and not a movie.

Needless to say, the fact that Akabane and Sakura had decided to go out and see if Himiko was okay was a notably bad twist of fate. Even worse was the fact that the three were fated to have their paths meet while Ban's rage was still red-hot.

Ban saw Akabane and Sakura coming before they saw him, as the two were engaged in a lively conversation about whether Himiko did or did not talk in her sleep, despite the fact that she vigorously denied doing so. Hearing this conversation only furthered his rage, as it drew up fare more detailed images of sweet Himiko crying in pain as Akabane abused her gentle body.

Sakura noticed Ban as she reached them. She unfortunately did not notice the cloud he carried above his head. "Oh, hello, Ban-san. Have you seen Himiko? Akabane-san and I were looking for her," she asked innocently.

Akabane noticed immediately that, in addition to mumbling beneath his breath, Ban seemed to be giving off a strange transparent purple aura. He blinked, thinking his eyes were playing tricks on him. No, it was there… that couldn't be good.

The defensive shield he threw up around himself when he realized what was happening wasn't nearly enough to ward off the crushing power of the first blow. He screamed something that sounded like a slurred version of "This is for what you've done to Himiko!" Not having a firm stance, Akabane was thrown several feet back, hard enough that a massive web of cracks was left in the store windows where he struck them.

The window fell to pieces as Akabane's body bounced off the glass. A shower of razor-sharp shards rained down around him as he fell, causing the street where he fell to glitter as though littered with fallen stars.

Akabane picked himself up and wiped a drop of blood from his lips. The shield had taken most of the damage rather than his internal organs. If he hadn't used it, he likely would have been completely knocked unconscious. He dodged the follow-up punch with so little room to spare that he could count the hairs on Ban's fist as it passed his face, obliterating a display of fruit when it landed.

Ban turned around to face Akabane very slowly, one baby step at a time. By that moment, his entire body was radiating that violently quivering purple light. "I won't let you touch her, ever again," he threatened, voice sounding more like a machine than man or beast.

On one hand, Akabane was almost afraid. On the other hand, he was so thrilled that he could have lost control of his bladder. To be able to fight Ban so seriously outside of the Infinite Castle… what had he done to deserve such a treat?

"Do not you think this is a bad place to deal with our grudge?" Akabane asked, dodging another potentially spine-shattering blow. Ban wasn't giving him enough lag time to regroup and take the offensive away. "Even if it is night, showing our full powers in the middle of city streets? Not wise."

Ban didn't seem to care, landing a blow that shredded most of Akabane's left sleeve and raked the skin beneath until it was raw and bloody. Akabane, for his part, managed to land several blows to Ban with the scalpels. Ban wasn't leaving him enough of a window of an opportunity to summon up anything beyond his basic attacks. He needed his sword, as Ban had already drawn his most powerful weapon if he had not yet attacked with it. Ban wasn't giving him the time necessary to call it up, though.

Running until her lungs felt as though they might burst, Sakura fetched Himiko and Ginji and was racing back to the battle with them. They arrived right as Akabane caught Ban's fist within his own. Too late, he realized the hand he had caught was not Ban's dominant fist. The hand with the crushing grip had reached around and taken hold of Akabane's leg. In one fluid motion, he bent the bone until it shattered and tore free of Akabane's flesh.

Released from the grip, Akabane fell to the pavement. Bone and meat were visible through the hole torn in his pants. Ban landed on a nearby rooftop, crouched more like a tiger than a snake, watching as Akabane slowly sat up.

Akabane ran his hands over the wound, wincing when his fingertips touched raw bone. He couldn't stand on that leg or run, even if he wanted to. He drew up a defensive shield of scalpels, knowing they would do nothing against the massive eyes of the snake God flickering in the blackened sky like dying neon signs.

"Ban, no!" Himiko screamed, running towards the fight. Ban was going to kill them. He was going to take away their lives before they'd taken their first breaths in the world… The snake dived down towards the broken Akabane. Akabane attempted to run, but the break left his sprawling on the chunks of pavement. Himiko, running forward without thinking, threw herself over his body. Closing her eyes, she waited for the impact.

The impact never came. Himiko slowly opened her eyes again, only to discover that she'd been crying. "Are you okay?" Sakura asked as Himiko got off of Akabane. In a moment, Ginji was climbing the side of the building to go to where Ban had last been standing.

"Thank… thank goodness Ban stopped his attack in time," Himiko choked, weakly smiling at Sakura. She'd almost given up her life without thinking.

Sakura looked conflicted as she wound her headband around Akabane's leg tightly to still the bleeding. "He wasn't… the one who stopped the attack."

Himiko stared uncomprehendingly at Sakura. "Ban-chan! Ban-chan? BAN-CHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAN!" she heard Ginji scream in the distance. Though he was so close, his voice sounded as if it were coming from a million miles away.

-6-

To Be Continued


	8. Filler Bunny

Akabane found himself walking down a long gray hallway. His shoes echoed off the tiled floor, booming empty sounds in the darkness. He could not tell if the hallway was wide or narrow, for beyond a single row of spotlights overhead there was nothing but pitch blackness. The spotlights pointed him forward, giving him no other option of a direction to walk in.

How did I get here, he wondered. The last thing he remembered, he was lying on his back in the streets with Ginji screaming out his partner's name in the distance. He paused, looking all around. This was- he recognized this place. He had walked down this hallway once, on a job. He hadn't been back to that place since. So why should he be there now?

He reached out with one hand to see if he could feel walls in the darkness beyond, but found nothing except empty air. It was almost as if he limbs failed to exist once they left the circle of overhead lights. He drew them back. He could not remember having his injured leg healed, could not remember having come back to this place he had once passed through. Yet there was the same suitcase he had carried those weeks ago, still tightly held in his left hand. He'd delivered that suitcase so long ago, and hadn't seen it since.

That meant this was a dream. He must have passed out from blood loss and started to dream. Well, at least now that he knew that, it meant that he could control what was happening around him. After all, if it was just a dream, nothing could hurt him.

He continued to follow the row of lights, feeling mildly disturbed when he realized he could not remember how this job had ended. He supposed that was because it had ended like so many other jobs he could no longer remember: uneventfully.

He stepped out onto what appeared to be the floor of an empty warehouse. The circles of light came together in the middle of the concrete floor, forming a wide pool of white light that was just bright enough to see the outlines of an overhead walk, boarded-over windows and boxes. He didn't remember what the outside of the building had looked like, but for some reason, he could not remember there having been boarded up windows. He frowned to himself.

He took another step forward, noticing that his clients seemed to be nowhere in view. The light was bright enough that he could dimly see each wall, but he saw no human forms moving. He strained his ears, but heard no sounds of footsteps or breathing.

Then, he heard a sound like a broken guitar string whipping through the air. He tried to dodge left, but a silver string came out of no where and wrapped itself around his leg. His arm went up, scalpels drawn, ready to attack. A second string came from above, wrapping itself around his fingers and his scalpels, holding them tightly in place in a matrix of wire.

His other arm went up to assist the first one, only to end up similarly wrapped in wire. His other leg, by that time, had been wrapped and tied in the strange silver wire from knee to ankle. He would not stand the humiliation of being beaten by a mere thread user. He tried to draw his arm down, only to find the wires moving with him in a fluid manner that prevented him from truly moving, but also released enough slack that he was unable to get any sort of tight force pulling against the strings.

A string shot past his face, and in that moment he realized he was not dealing with an ordinary string user. These strings hummed and vibrated, as if possessing a life force of their own. The string that had brushed past his face suddenly wound itself tightly around his neck, causing him to choke.

The strings around his wrists suddenly drew painfully taut and yanked him up off the ground, holding him suspended in air. Despite the way the strings were digging into his skin, causing his fine red blood to run down his arms, he could not take control of them with his abilities. The humming coming off of them seemed to be blocking his efforts.

That has to be because this is a dream, he thought as he found himself suspended there. Of course, some kind of odd dream brought on by this miserable condition. No string user, no matter if they did possess some kind of specially endowed string, could have gotten the drop on him so easily.

He heard the sound of someone walking towards him in the darkness, and then a man appeared. Or rather, the outline of a man appeared. Silver-blonde hair sat on top of an empty black sphere, like a wig placed over a black party balloon. A long white coat draped in the air, but it seemed not to be attached to any sort of body. No hands emerged from beneath the sleeves of the coat, despite the fact that when they drew together a clapping noise escaped from the vicinity of where they should have been.

The floating coat came closer to where he was hanging, tilting as though to allow eyes that did not exist to get a better look at what the spider had trapped in its web. The invisible thing's gaze finally turned downward, to the fallen suitcase. A shoe unattached to a foot kicked the suitcase, hard, causing the top to pop open. Only then did Akabane see that there was nothing inside the supposed cargo except what appeared to be a lead weight.

"Empty," a voice that came from the direction of the floating coat commented. "Do you know why it was empty?" He felt a strand of hair being brushed out of his face as an empty sleeve came near his chin, though no visible hand was responsible. "Because you were the delivery, with your pretty purple eyes… A perfect mail-order bride."

The sleeve went up again, pulling a scalpel from between his fingers. To his horror, Akabane found that he could not summon that scalpel back to his body. It was as if it was no longer in his power… but of course, that was because this was just a dream. A metaphor for how helpless he felt in the situation he was in, perhaps?

The invisible figure seemed to care not for Akabane's internal dialogue, instead using the blade to cut down the front of his shirt, popping the buttons off his coat and dress shirt. He felt pressure like a hand on his chest, wandering over his muscles, but he could see nothing but the empty sleeve moving in front of his eyes. "Such a fine specimen you are," the voice mocked. The blade was suddenly thrust violently down, heading straight in the direction of his groin-

"Wake up!" Akabane suddenly found himself shouting, despite the fact that he was already awake and lying on his side in a strange, makeshift bed. He looked around, a bit hazy. It took him a minute or two to realize that he'd apparently been carried back to that little hospital in the Infinite Castle.

"Such odd dreams," he commented to himself, rubbing his head. "Not to mention that I have been fainting frequently lately. Such a thing can not possibly be a good sign…" He forced himself into a sitting position and found that his pants had been removed and a cast placed on his damaged leg. It did not matter if they had put him in a cast or not; his natural healing ability meant that he would be off that leg for two weeks at the most. What did annoy him was that they'd chosen an off-purplish black for the cast color. Just because he wore black clothes did not automatically he wanted everything in his life to be black. What did they think he was, some kind of Goth?

Meanwhile, Himiko sat and watched in silence as Ginji emerged from the back area, his hands clasped in front of his body and tears dripping down his face. She stood up, putting one small hand on his shaking shoulder. "Gen-san said that Ban is going to be okay," she said firmly, eyes lit with a spark of internal fire. "There's no need to cry."

"But he's all bruised up! Who would do such a thing to him?"

Himiko removed her hand, studying her fingernails with great interest. She dared not say it, but in all fairness, if Ban had not been stopped she might have ended up badly wounded or dead. She turned her attention sharply to Sakura, who stood silently in a corner with a distant gaze on her face.

"Sakura, what exactly did you see back there?"

"I only saw a quick glimpse of it, but it almost looked like… like either a white eagle, or a feathered lion… I don't know," she said slowly, twisting the pink cloth of her headband in her hands. Himiko could not help but notice that all their nervous ticks seemed to have emerged since they had brought Ban and Akabane to Gen's pharmacy. "I barely saw it out of the corner of an eye, and I know what I saw sounds stupid."

"Ban can manifest a giant glowing snake out of his arm. I don't think anything you claimed to see back there would sound stupid at this point, short of saying you saw the Incredible Hulk there."

"I don't know what I saw. I'm sorry." She turned her eyes upwards, as if gesturing with them. "I should go check on Makubex. I've been neglecting my duties these last few weeks with what has been going on down here."

She turned to leave, only for Himiko to reach out and grab her wrist strongly. "Please, Sakura. We have to know what you saw. Something attacked Ban, and whatever it was, it was strong enough to not only cancel his attack but knock him flat on his back."

"I didn't see anything!" Sakura suddenly cried, tearing her arm out of Himiko's grip and running off.

Himiko stared gape-jawed at the girl's sudden run. "What got into her?" she asked, looking back at Ginji.

Ginji's arms were folded over his chest, a serious scowl on his normally care-free face. "When I catch the person who did this to Ban-chan, I…"

"I understand, Ginji. It's possible that the same person who attacked Ban is also the person who did that to Akabane," she mused out loud, barely even realizing that Ginji was not privy to the same inside information she was.

"Huh, Himiko-chan? Did what to Akabane-san?"

Meanwhile, Akabane had gotten to his feet with the aid of a set of crutches that had been apparently left for him, a hospital bed sheet wrapped around his waist. His side hurt, and he discovered a fresh cut in the vicinity of where they had hooked up the machines to the endoscope two weeks prior. Nice of them to take another look without his permission, wasn't it? Not that they actually cared what happened to his body, of course, just as long as the little parasites growing inside it were safe.

He hobbled out into the main area, finding it devoid of people. He could hear voices drifting from the back. That must be where everyone was. He started moving in their direction, and then paused. There were several glossy photographs showing images of vaguely humanoid creatures lying on the old man's desk.

He recognized what those photos were of immediately and moved away from them, not wanting to see. The old phrase said that ignorance was bliss, and he preferred to ignore the situation as much as he could. After all, the more validation he gave to the parasite's existence, the more justification Himiko felt in taking the moral high ground. He wobbled his way over to the doorway, pausing to catch his breath. Was he that out of shape that walking across the room left him panting?

Himiko's voice drifted in from the other room. "I promised I wouldn't tell, Ginji. I'm sorry."

"Himiko, please! If what happened to Ban has something to do with Akabane-san, I need to know."

Himiko hesitated. Akabane would not find out if she told him, right? He was unconscious in the other room. "You promise, PROMISE not to tell that you know?"

"I promise!" Ginji swore, crossing a finger over his heart in a gesture of earnesty.

"Akabane-san is having a baby. Twins, actually."

There was a long, heavy pause between the two of them, during which Akabane remained outside the door and trembled slightly with rage. Yes, she HAD absolutely promised not to tell anyone. Yet as he stood there, he'd heard her betray his trust with seemingly not a minute's worth of thought.

"You… are you okay, Himiko-chan? Boys don't have babies."

"That's what I said, too! But it's true, I've seen them. There are photos in the next room. To make sure they were okay, Gen took a look and…" her voice dropped off, suddenly becoming soft and wistful. "He said there are a little girl and a little boy. Don't tell Akabane, though. I don't think he wants to know. I don't think he cares about them at all." Her voice had turned from sweet to acidic. "How someone can have so little love for their own family, I don't… I just don't understand it, Ginji!"

How someone could have so little concern for his feelings and opinions, he had no idea. Those things were not his family. She knew what he'd gone through, and she still continued to act like everything was normal. She still continued to refuse to admit that not everyone loved babies as much as she did.

He left the two of them to their amazed conversation and went for the door as fast as he could. In his rush, he accidentally caught the rubber stop on one of the crutches on the doorframe. Before he could correct himself he fell, landing sprawled across the hallway outside Gen's door.

The sound of his fall drew Ginji and Himiko's attention, bringing them both to the door before he could right himself. They found him lying on his stomach, sprawled out in the hallway, surrounded by crutches. Himiko made a disgruntled "tsk" sound in the back of her throat, reaching out to pull him to his feet.

He immediately reached up and slapped her hand away. "I am going to stand up by myself," he snapped, reaching out for the crutches.

"Stop being so stubborn. You fell. You could have hurt yourself even more," she snapped in response, pulling one of the crutches out of his arm's reach. "What were you doing, wandering out into the hallway half dressed like that, anyway?"

He hadn't considered his state of undress. He had merely wanted to get out of there, instead of standing in the doorway and listening to her betray his confidences. What other option had there been, other than storming in and confronting them, in which case they would have ganged up and made him seem like the villain in the situation. Like they always did.

It eventually took Gen arriving in the hallway to convince him to come back inside. He still trusted another member of the medical profession to some degree, even if they did differ on technique and theory. He had also began to feel where he'd hit his knee in the fall, making his already broken leg throb and tingle.

Himiko made some snarky comment about how he hadn't answered her question, whereas Ginji merely stared at him with big, brown, awe-struck eyes. It was obvious he wanted to say something about what he knew, but was keeping his promise to Himiko not to let on that he had been told. At least someone was capable of keeping a secret, it seemed.

"I'm going to go… check on Ban. Yep yep!" Ginji said, rubbing the back of his spiked blonde hair and bowing up. He seemed to realize the amount of tension in the air and want to escape it.

After a moment of his absence, Himiko picked up the glossy photographs off the desk. "Here," she said, forcing them into Akabane's hands. "I wish you had been awake to see it. She was kicking and wiggling around, but her brother seemed to be- Akabane!" He had torn up the pictures and deposited them in a heap about his feet. She glared at him, reaching down and picking up the larger remaining chunks of the pieces. "What did you do that for?"

"I do not know, but it felt good," he answered with a shrug. That was the absolute truth. He had no real good reason for destroying the images, other than that he didn't want to look at them. His entire lower abdomen hurt, and not from the pain of the fall, either. He just wanted to lie down and be left alone for awhile, and having those pictures pushed in his face hadn't helped.

"You really are a- you- I don't have words for you!" she cried, throwing up her arms in resignation.

"How about having words for someone who not only looks inside my body while I am unconscious, but tells others what she promises she would not?" he asked, still holding his middle. Gen, by that time, seemed to have noticed the way his hands were positioned and the expression on his face and had put a concerned hand on his shoulder.

Her face fell, but not enough to indicate that she genuinely felt bad about what she'd done. "It concerns him now, if whatever is after you also attacked Ban."

"You do not know that. You have no reason to believe that," he answered her.

Before Himiko could come up with her next retort, the old man suddenly announced "Gas pain."

Both were so startled by the seemingly random comment that it threw their argument stances right off balance. "Excuse me?" Himiko asked.

"Gas pain," Gen explained, standing up. "That's why he's holding himself like that and making those faces." He picked up the crutches and handed them back to Akabane. "Come on, come into the next room and lie down on your side until it passes."

They left him alone and pulled the curtain, and despite the fact that they were whispering he heard the old man having a few choice words with Himiko about the fact that she hadn't kept her promise, and Himiko shooting back in righteous indignation that the two incidences just had to be connected. He didn't know what his opinion was on whether they were connected. He only knew that he was absolutely exhausted, and felt as though he'd gone a week without sleep. That, and he was insanely hungry for some kind of bitter food. Preferably some kind of sour, acidic liquid…

Elsewhere in the city, a man with skin so pale-white it almost seemed like the flesh of a porcelain doll was holding his teacup. A bloody bandage was wrapped tightly around his palm. The man who had appeared to Akabane earlier as a cameraman sat across from him, as silent as a ghost.

"I almost was not able to stop that attack, only cancel it out," the white-clad figure said, smiling at the chained man. "I believe I will have to move up my reunion date with our little transporter, if he is going to continue to be a difficult patient." The cameraman said nothing, prompting the tea-drinker to make a gesture of annoyance. "Tokashi, when I speak I expect you to answer."

The cameraman weakly set down his tea cup, hands shaking slightly. "Isn't this too much, doctor?"

"This is what your sponsors wanted, is it not?"

"It approaches our end, but your means…" the cameraman argued, holding so tightly to the teacup that he threatened to squash it between his fingers."I can not agree with what you've done to that poor man."

"You find him attractive. Tokashi, if you are quiet and play along with me just a little longer, I'll let you have him for your own. Once I get what I want out of it, and once your sponsors get what they want, we could care less if you do with him what you like."

"I don't mean like that!" Tokashi answered back, checked anger in his voice. He could not make this man mad or express his own frustration to this man, for the sake of his sponsors. He wished he could. Even he thought this madman had gone too far…

"Just give me a little more time," the white-dressed doctor smiled, setting his cup down beside a small blonde doll in a rose-print dress. "And you will see my plans come to fruition."

A/N: My original notes for this were taken and I have not yet managed to reclaim them, though I know where they are. Sorry to have to provide a filler chapter, but I wanted to give you something. Hopefully I will get the actual notes back sometime this week so I can resume writing.


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